The Cult @ Brixton Academy

Tonight I met up with Sara and Christian and headed to see The Cult at the Brixton Academy. Sadly Toni couldn't make it as we had no cover for Pam (Leanne had done last night as she couldn't do tonight).  Spare ticket was sold to a tout (and very begrudgingly at that). I bumped into Steve Doll (former Hollywood Doll drummer) in the queue and had a brief catch up and we agreed it would be good to try and get the gang together for a beer sometime soon.

Once inside the venue it was time for musical chairs. Our tickets were for the Circle and were unreserved which meant that we could sit where we wanted. Or so we thought.... Sadly security decided that we had to fill in from the front and were restricting where we could go. Apparently this was at the request of The Cult. So we reluctantly took some seats in the area designated to watch the first support band.

Fable
A good opening act with a nice blend of rocky electronica. I'd like to see them in a more intimate venue as they only had time for four numbers. They did a blinding cover of David Bowie's Let's Dance though.

Fable's setlist was:
Human Pretending
Delta State
Let's Dance
Fragile

After Fable we realised that people were now filling in the seats a bit further back so we went and relocated ourselves to slightly better ones, not without ending up in a debate with security once again. This is what we thought of the whole mess:

Broken Hands
This lot were an odd fit for the bill as far as I was concerned. Sara described them as Kasabian but crap (which I misheard as Kasabian on crack which was no better really). They were well received by the crowd but I just didn't get their weird shoegazing indie grunge noise.

Broken Hand's setlist was:
Spectrum
?
Who Sent You
Four
747
Meteor
Turbulence


The Cult
Strong start to their set with some great energy brewing. We got a bit concerned though when we saw that Ian Astbury had to read the words to Hinterland, not cool Ian, not cool! It's sad to see such a great performer reduced to needing lyrics in front of him. Turned out he had a whole load of lyrics not very discretely laid out in from of him, really disappointing to see that. Astbury also had an annoying habit of dropping Blackstar references in all over the place which got a bit much at times.

That aside, it was a great set. The Cult have certainly still got it and now how to put on a great show.

The Cult's setlist was:

Dark Energy
Rain
Wild Flower
Horse Nation
Hinterland
Sweet Soul Sister
Lil' Devil
Gone
Honey From A Knife
Birds Of Paradise
Deeply Ordered Chaos
Fire Woman
Nirvana
The Phoenix
She Sells Sanctuary

Encore:
Moonage Daydream
Spiritwalker
Love Removal Machine