Placebo- 20 year anniversary tour at Brixton Academy 23/10/2017.

Placebo were part of the musical decade that passed me by (young family etc) and it was interesting to contemplate that Placebo were the contemporaries of the likes of Oasis,Blur and Suede. Got a spare ticket at the last minute and so I didn’t have much emotional investment in this one. The queue to get in was around three sides of the block on this sold out evening but got in within about 30 minutes. Speaking to a fellow punter it was his band of choice as a 13 year old living in his bedroom and I think that was the rump of the audience.

The original three piece band had expanded to at least six members on the night, although it sometimes felt like more as they injected a big sound to many of the numbers. Sometimes” less is more” and I think that might have been usefully employed in part with the performance. They exhibited that tight confident application of a band that has played these songs countless times ,although I felt they approached them with appropriate enthusiasm ie they didn’t appear to be rushing through a greatest hits outing.

They received a rapturous reception from a good natured and adoring audience. Brixton can sometimes get quite aggressive when its packed to the rafters and people are literally standing out at the far bar. The set included many but not all iconic singles and they played a good 90 minutes without it seeming to long.

Only real criticism is that the encore of Nancy Boy lost something in the production and fell foul to not following “the less is more” principle.  It was the song I was most looking forward to and was not crisp enough.

Enjoyable outing and got a few more at Brixton in December so better get used to the place