Live Review: Kaiser Chiefs – MelodyVR – Brixton Academy – Live In London

On Saturday night, Brixton Academy had the pleasure of hosting the Kaiser Chiefs as a part of their current MelodyVR concert series at the venue. The MelodyVR app allows fans to watch shows from 360° cameras around the stage, and fans can do this through their phone or VR headset. I decided to watch this show on my phone.

The night started off with the band talking from their homes via a video call, reminiscing about their ‘duck’ tour from last year and how they miss it, before saying that they want to do it again right here right now. This is when the feed cuts out, darkness fills the stage and the band come out and play ‘People know’.

The band’s stage design was great, with the band playing off giant “tyre-looking” platforms. The band also built a house on the venue’s famous sloped floor, giving the set some depth as Ricky moved around throughout the night. Nice to see them taking advantage of the venue being empty.

Maybe it’s the fact that they haven’t performed in months or maybe the empty venue nerves got to him, but I found frontman Ricky’s voice to fluctuate between being on point and just a little off throughout the night.

It did feel like some songs were being played a little too fast, this was particularly apparent to me with the bands most popular song ‘Ruby’, however maybe this was to catch up on the time lost from watching frontman Ricky trying to hook a rubber duck from a small paddling pool for a minute or so, earlier in the stream before they played ‘cannons’.

I was really hoping the band would do something similar to the Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes MelodyVR show, bringing fans on the screens and having a little interaction with them sometimes. Live Streams should be taking advantage of the technology available to them. The frontman kept saying that this was an “interactive stream” but unless you count that viewers were able to look around the different camera angles (Thanks to MelodyVR), there wasn’t really any.

The stream had excellent sound quality and great camera positions, I watched the show from the “director’s cut” which takes you to the best camera to watch the show from at that moment.

The stream offered up a good setlist (found at the bottom of this page), with songs from throughout their discography. The setlist included all their greatest hits. The band looked like they were genuinely happy to be back playing again, with every member continually smiling throughout.

I hate it when bands do fake encores, in my opinion the band should just go on stage, play what they want to play and that’s it. What makes it worse is you can sometimes get an extra song or two in the time they’re off stage. However, I can understand why bands want to do this, it makes the crowd feel special, it makes the band feel loved, and it’s kinda tradition at this point; and therefore I can accept them at an in person live show, but to do it on a livestream just feels wrong. Thankfully the “encore” time was filled with a video of the band playing around in the green room, saying how they think they can “hear the fans at home wanting an encore”, so at least it wasn’t just dead air.

Thank you all for joining us virtually at @O2academybrix 💛💙 We can’t wait to see you in real life again 🎉 pic.twitter.com/sTjDiWzbBr

— Kaiser Chiefs (@KaiserChiefs) November 28, 2020

The encore ended the night with ‘Oh My God’, and the hopeful promise to do this again in person next year. The band walked out to confetti filling the room. The Kaiser Chiefs gave a great night of entertainment overall, and it’s good to see how the venue can be used in different ways by different bands.