Maximo Park at Brixton Academy

Valentine’s Day 2026 was a bad one for most men who wear red trousers, what with England losing at rugby. For Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith and the wine-coloured leg-huggers he wore on the Brixton Academy stage, it was something of a triumph.

It’s a success for any band to be here 20 years after they first blared out of teenagers’ bedrooms, when age and acrimony have withered others.

Maximo Park aren’t just still going, though. Smith is still as lithe as he was in the mid-2000s. He belts out the hits like Graffiti, Apply Some Pressure and Our Velocity with similar energy to the first time round – when his enjoyably spiky Geordie vocals, as well as guitarist Duncan Lloyd and drummer Tom English’s art rock sensibilities, set them above many of their landfill or whiny emo peers.

Notably, extra fizz is added by touring keyboardist Jemma Freese. Who is not only majestic but also matches the livewire Smith bop for bop.

Graffiti prompts an early singalong to its yearning-filled chorus. Meanwhile, the jarring but familiarly infectious Apply Some Pressure and Velocity get the Academy rocking.

If that’s all there was to Maximo Park – a few hits old enough to get served at the bar – then things might quickly get tired, quickly. But their admirably taut set is also threaded through with humour and catchy or brooding tracks that leave little let-up.

Of the limited newer material, it’s Favourite Songs that stands out, marrying the group’s contagious riffs to more wistful, mature lyrics.

It’s the early bangers the crowd is here for, though, after all, the tour celebrates the 20^th anniversary of their 2005 debut, A Certain Trigger.

A common theme, evident in songs like Postcard of a Painting and The Coast Is Always Changing, is about leaving things behind and venturing out into the big, wide world; losing young love, or the lure and forbidding nature of London (where the album was recorded), for young lads setting out from the North East.

There’s a sense then that this tour – and its London leg in particular – is a group coming full circle. No longer bright young things, but still packing out the same venues that once thronged with indie kids with those who may now be parents to them.

They end their encore with Going Missing, which prompts a singalong that’s something of a valedictory moment for a band marking a milestone by showing they’ve very much still got it.