live review: the black keys. brixton academy. 2 november 2010

did you know you’re not allowed to take sharpies into brixton academy? seriously, what damage are you going to do with a sharpie, that you’re not going to do with a biro. in a way, biros are more dangerous because the felt tip of a sharpie will give somewhat compared to the solidness of a biro tip. do not fear though, the sharpies (that’s right, plural motherfucker) were returned undamaged after the show.

before we get onto the actual music itself, can i just talk about brixton academy a bit as well please. now, i know it has the brilliant sloping floor and is a decent size, but i have a list of things wrong with it. queues queues queues for the bar. you’re one of the biggest venues about… please get bigger bars. the cloakroom. okay, so cloakrooms everywhere are bad, but £2 per item? and you’re slow. very slow. the sound wasn’t bad last night, but i’ve had some very poor experiences with that. why split the men and women going in as well? there really is no need. i’ll let you off the heat because there are a shit load of people there, so there isn’t much you can do. all i know though is that i used to love that venue. not anymore. i’ve probably been there twenty times plus in my lifetime. i have one more planned there (foals next week), but after that i’m going to have a good think about going again. it annoys me. sorry. rant over.

so, the black keys. you multi-instrumental geniuses you. last night they were superb. not quite “the best gig i’ve ever been to” as emma described it, but very, very good. i couldn’t believe how much noise they managed to make between the two of them. playing a variety of tracks from the past two albums (‘brother’ really is a stupidly good album still) they, and i’ve always wanted to use this phrase, rocked the joint. you can tell that they both ooze talent as an hour and a bit simply flew by. at the end there wasn’t a disappointed face to be seen. they had to be good too or i’d have been well pissed. i missed tottenham’s glorious european night of pure footballing excellence to go to this gig. that is something. in fact, imagine if they’d had the game showing on a big screen? watching gareth bale tear inter milan apart while listening to ‘everlasting light’. amazing. that would get me back to brixton.

as an aside, i don’t understand the big hooha about support act, the walkmen. i don’t like them one bit. i don’t know why, but i don’t. their apparent biggest track, ‘the rat’, sounds like a sub-standard album track from the music. i love the music (the band, not the walkmen’s music), but nobody wants a sub-standard anything.