SKUNK ANANSIE + SO GOOD @ BRIGHTON DOME, 15TH APRIL 2025
So Good, Bring the Brat Pop Mayhem, Skunk Anansie Keep the Fire Burning
So Good – the band which have supported Skunk Anansie throughout this tour – have a visual identity that is immediately striking. First, we are greeted with the backing band, clad in pink balaclavas and white hoodies splattered with pink. Then, the band itself – frontwoman Sophie wearing a silver two-piece alongside two other women wearing black pieces with silver chains attached to their outfits. This gives the effect of a uniform alongside the different variations of colours – the black and silver alongside the pink also highlights the two sides of the So Good coin – they are intrinsically a feminine article, that knows how to have fun, whilst also discussing serious, relevant ideas and politics. A punk band that forces you to face up to its femininity. With hooks! That’s the core of the label, So Good ascribe themselves – brat pop. As they begin, the lights flash white – an uncompromising start to a set by a band that will hold your attention and win you over in the next thirty minutes.
Once the set starts, the energy never really drops from that high point. So Good are immediately fun to watch – alongside the uniform look there’s the choreographed movements that adds to the oozing of confidence coming from the stage – a constant fluidity as they sway and kick their way through the first half of the set. By this point, too, they have won the audience over – confronting the deeply messed up state of current politics by asking the audience to ‘put your middle fingers up to the fascists.’ This audience inclusion extends as well, to introducing the song if i had a by saying ‘we heard a rumour that people in Brighton have big dicks – i’ve got a massive dick!’ So Good are loud and unashamed to confront sexuality, too. Including to the point of choreographing movements on stage to the effect of dick sucking – kneeling on the ground and using the microphone to create phallic movements. There are moments of seeming quiet too – a moment in the song I rewrote the fucking bible that has Sophie talking atop a sparse amount of instrumentation – before everything kicks back in -, i will love you forever a song which straddles the line of emotionally vulnerable with lyrics that are also funny, getting a laugh from the audience.
So Good achieves the core principle of a support set – getting the audience nicely loose before the main act plays but should not be dismissed as simply a warm up act – anyone who does such is in for a nasty shock against an act at this level of power and energy.
Even back in 1994, Skunk Anansie felt like an entirely different prospect to their contemporaries, it is perhaps apt then that moments before the band come on stage, The Damned’s New Rose blasts from the speakers – a callback to a musical subculture they would perhaps of fit better alongside – Skin’s striking voice so singular in it’s emotional connection, you believe every word. One moment able to create an unsettling quiet in a room full of people, the next filling the room, every corner with it’s sheer power and intensity.
Skin’s outfit, too – the effect of a flowing cape – making a juxtaposition with the spikes covering the entire set. The set itself features new songs, like the songs Cheers and Animal (introduced by saying Skin was going to dedicate it to someone and that the chosen person was an animal), as well as their oldest, Little Baby Swastika, in a way that flows well. It is easy when you have a long career to have moments in a set where the energy gets lost amongst the self-indulgence of wanting to play new songs no one knows. However, that doesn’t happen here. Instead, the crowd hangs on every word. In fact, the new song Animal is perhaps one of the most intense, relentless moments of the set with its thrashing drums and lyrics about being an animal. The other new song, Cheers, is introduced by Skin, explaining sarcastically that it’s about how we have taken such good care of the planet.
Indeed, it’s not just the sound of Skunk Anansie that makes them stand out amongst their peers. It’s also how political they are (yes it’s fucking political) which is a big factor in the way in which they feel very current, despite starting out as a band in 1994. It’s not all serious, though. Alongside songs about how we need to stick together in the face of people trying to divide us, there’s also the moments where Skin teases the audience about remembering the date of their album release (saying ‘you are bright sparks aren’t you’ when the audience remembered) and a general feeling, just like the introduction to the song that this is an audience and band united in love for the evening.
This is compounded, too, by Skin walking around the entire standing area, into the audience and crowd surfing. There’s nothing between the audience and the singer for the entirety of the performance of Twisted. The penultimate song of the evening is Skankhead, which is introduced again with a sense of comedy – that the audience is too raucous and needs to calm down, a direct opposition to the momentum of the song. The set does end though with probably the most chill song of the evening – newest single lost and found which although still has moments of intensity, is much more focused on being melodic and makes for a great ending song.
As the band leave – to the tune of Blondie’s Atomic – there’s a distinct party-like atmosphere, celebratory. Despite the 30 years that have passed, Skunk Anansie feel like a band at the peak of their powers, still, perhaps even more so for how much more evidently relaxed they have become. The evening feels like being part of an exclusive club – a community of people based on the same values and love of music – and one that is still going strong and exciting to join years after its creation.
WORDS: ELOISE LANE PHOTOS: CRIS WATKINS
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