Maxïmo Park challenge the status quo at O2 Academy Brixton

One of my weird and not-at-all-useful superpowers is the ability to spot the people going to the same gig (or festival) as me from as far away as possible. It turns into a game of ‘how right was I?’ the closest we get. And there I was, on the evening of Valentine’s Day, stood on the bus stop by the Lewisham Clock Tower with my husband in tow, took one look at the couple who stood next to us and whispered “They’re going where we’re going”. Of course, we shared the long-winded journey on the P4 (we could have probably flown to Italy in the time we spent on that bus) all the way to the doors of O2 Academy in Brixton.

Art Brut

Kick starting the night with an oomph were Art Brut, the indie art-rockers known for their frontman’s Eddie Argos’s self-deprecating humour. After opening with ‘Formed a Band’, their very first single from back in 2004, which for a really long time was left off their live set lists. However in 2026 it sounded s fresh as ever – minus the Top Of The Pops reference.

We’re gonna be the band that writes the song
That makes Israel and Palestine get along
We’re gonna write a song as universal as Happy Birthday
That makes sure everybody knows that
Everything is going to be okay
We’re going to take that song
And we’re going to play it
Eight weeks in a row on Top of the Pops

Argos reminisced how when he initially started the band, his ambition was to play a support slot here, and 20 years later they managed to play support slots at O2 Brixton four times – “We should get a stamp card or something!”

Their name means outsider art, as defined by a French painter Jean Dubuffet: “the work of the mentally ill, prisoners, children, and primitive artists [that] was the raw expression of a vision or emotions, untrammelled by convention”, and their performance plays into that perfectly. Their set felt like a fireside chat, with songs from across their two decades long tenure as a band and drawn from personal experiences broken up by anecdotes that are just as an integral part of the performance as the music. “We’re communists really!” – exclaimed Argos – “We used to say ‘Tories out’, but we cannot say that anymore, and I’m applying for American visa!”

Art Brut walked so that the likes of Getdown Services can run and it was amazing to revisit their outsider art as it hasn’t lost an inch of relevance.

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Art Brut – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

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Maxïmo Park

At precisely 9pm, Maxïmo Park arrived on stage with boundless energy, instantly working the stage set up to accommodate high kicks, jumps and trademark pointing moves from the vocalist Paul Smith. Celebrating 21 years since the release of their debut album A Certain Trigger and 25 years as a band (they formed in Newcastle in 2000), this was one of those gigs that were fuelled by nostalgia as much as they were underpinned by undeniable show- and musicianship. The nostalgia factor was what allowed me to spot my fellow gig travellers all the way from Lewisham: millennials, with fashion sense clearly formed by coming of age at the peak of the indie boom, en route to revisit those yesteryears now that they have a mortgage and expendable income.

Maxïmo Park themselves didn’t shy away from that nostalgia and reminisced about how they used to play songs like ‘A19’, “a song about being in the North East and thinking London is 250 miles away” in venues like the iconic Buffalo Bar (my old stomping ground in the late 2000s, during my very own indie phase) and Barfly in Camden. They broke up their set to emphasise just how much it meant to them to see such a hallowed ground like the O2 in Brixton filled with people still responding to those songs 21 years on – and all those years of touring paid off, because they sounded incredible. Two simple words that came to my head as I watched the show were: “class act”.

While introducing ‘The National Health’, Smith said that it always felt weird to him how there’s this idea that there is only one way of being if you live in a certain country:

England is sick and I’m a casualty
I’m in a constant state of flux in terms of what to be
We generalise and we live inside
I feel we’re heading for a ca-ca-catastrophe

Returning for an encore after the initial finale of ‘Apply Some Pressure’ (which served as a call to action for the crowd because “I heard that if the crowd cheers really hard for a band, they have to come back, so this is our last song and I don’t know what happens after – APPLY SOME PRESSURE!”), Smith expressed that they were hoping to come back with new music soon. If that night at Brixton was anything to go by, I am really looking forward to Maxïmo Park’s “post punk panto” (as described by one of their earlier critics) on the state of the world in 2026. We need their defiant attitude served with a hick kick and a a stylish hat more than ever.

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

Maxïmo Park – O2 Academy Brixton – Magda Campagne

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Maxïmo Park’s 20th Anniversary tour concludes in their native Newcastle before continuing across Europe.