138. Adam Ant
O2 Academy Brixton
10 June 2016
There are albums, and then there are artefacts. Kings of the Wild Frontier is very much the latter, the kind of record that had us all smearing our mum’s foundation across our noses and taking a trip to the local charity shop to see if they had any 18th century Hussar jackets going spare.
It was pure pop-meets-punk glory, all tribal nonsense, in what we would now term, blatant cultural appropriation, but back then, it seemed perfectly acceptable for a bloke from North London to prance around pretending he was a warrior from the Sioux Nation; it was just called Thursday night on Top of the Pops.
Adam Ant’s magnum opus wasn’t just pop. It was pop with war drums, swagger and eyeliner. It was punk by way of panto; spaghetti western meets the I Spy book of anthropology. From that iconic cover of Adam dead-eyeing you in full, if slightly confused, cosplay to the thudding call-to-arms of “Dog Eat Dog”, this was a record that arrived with war paint and absolutely no self-awareness. And we loved it.
Now here we are, thirty-something years later, packed into a venue full of former Antpeople now sporting reading glasses and sensible footwear, to relive the magic one more time. The war paint may have faded, but the tribal call still rings out. Adam, now somewhere between reformed dandy and eccentric uncle, looks absolutely up for it. His voice is strong, his cheekbones are still sharp enough to open a can of Tenants, and there is that jacket, now slightly stretched at the seams.
He leads the charge through the entire Kings of the Wild Frontier album, front to back, and it's glorious. “Antmusic”, “Feed Me to the Lions”, “Killer in the Home”, it’s all there, pounding away with full pomp and theatrical flourish. The tribal beat thunders. The crowd, mostly comprised of former Smash Hits subscribers and people who once graffitied "Adam + Me = 4EVER" on a school desk, are loving every absurd second.
I miss Marco Pirroni, bless him. He always looked like a man who wandered into the wrong fancy dress party. It was always very apparent that he was never entirely comfortable with the cosplay, always more Camden pub-rock than dandy, a big bloke from Camden who had slapped a bit of lippy on. However, his replacement, Ant’s latest replacement, gamely chugs along, slashing out those spaghetti-punk riffs like it’s 1981 and the pubs still shut at 11.
The second half of the gig is a mixed bag: a bit of Dirk Wears White Sox (angular, arty, a reminder that Adam once fancied himself as a Serious Artist), a bit of the glittering car crash that was Prince Charming, which proved that lightning in a bottle is not something you can uncork twice. The title track gets wheeled out, of course, and we all do the dance, you know the one, half-prancing, half-parody. We’re in too deep now to turn back.
However, let’s not pretend this was ever about critical credibility. Adam Ant never needed your validation. He had feathers, cheekbones, and a twin-drummer set-up. He was a pop star made entirely of theatre and instinct, and Kings of the Wild Frontier remains one of the most bafflingly brilliant left-turns in British pop history. Tonight, we got to revel in its full, pomped-up glory.
Ridiculous? Absolutely. But also absolutely glorious. Antmusic, forever.