Lambrini Girls at the Garage

BRITs Week for War Child kicked off this week, and there couldn’t have been a better band to play one of the first gigs on the list than Lambrini Girls. Returning to London for the first time since November, when they brought the Kentish Town Forum down with a sold-out show, the group are at the Garage in Islington for a more intimate affair, this time for a good cause.

The room crackles with energy before the musicians walk onstage, and erupts the moment they launch into the set with their anti-cop anthem Bad Apple, which is also the opener to their album Who Let the Dogs Out. It doesn’t take long for the night’s first moshpit to erupt, egged on by singer and guitarist Phoebe Lunny, who means business in a suit painted with the words “MORE LUV, MORE CULTURE, MORE IMMIGRANTS” across its back.

In satisfying, classic punk fashion, the immensity of the sound produced by just three people is a thing to behold, with Selin Macieira-Boşgelmez’s bass and Misha Phillips’s drums chugging away as Lunny begins the ritual of whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Not that they need any help with that, as they’re already shouting along to every word.

For the first of many times in the night, Lunny parts the audience like a punk Moses, but before the band continues with Company Culture and Help Me I’m Gay, she pauses to remind everyone of the golden rule of the moshpit: “What do you do when someone falls?” she asks. “Pick them back up!” everyone shouts back.

Before launching into the nationalist-bashing God’s Country, Lunny lays out the outfit’s motivations, saying: “We sing songs about our shitty government, who want to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.” Condemning “elitist scum”, she continues: “F*ck the rich, f*ck the elite, any celebrity on the Epstein list and any government trying to justify what’s happening in Gaza.”

The performers blaze through Mr Lovebomb, You’re Not From Round Here, and Lads Lads Lads, punctuated with Lunny’s bouts of crowdsurfing and commands for yet another wall of death, while Selin and Misha hold down the fort on stage. The show is as interactive as they come, and attendees are led into a call and response for Craig David (“When I say Craig, you say David!” that’s interchanged with “When I say Lambrini, you say girls!” and “When I say f*ck, you say Reform!”) before they are prompted to form “the biggest moshpit the Garage has ever seen” by Lunny, who radiates joy and raw power.

Beyond the fun and games, Lambrini Girls remain steadfast on the important issues, and the set also touches on trans rights, being neurodivergent (Special Different), and the toxicity of a music scene run rampant with sexual abuse (Boys in the Band). Ending the show on a high, the group bring out Bimini Bon Boulash to sing Cuntology 101 with them, leading the venue into one last frenetic dance before returning for the encore with Big Dick Energy.

There is something so powerful about artists who step onto the stage with something to say, turn their spotlight onto the audience and make them listen. Leaving one of their shows, it becomes obvious that this shouldn’t be refreshing – it should be the bare minimum.