Maggie Lindemann @ O2 Institute, 25th May 2023
Tonight’s exciting surprise was support for Maggie Lindemann, Beauty School Dropout ,who blew up the stage from the very beginning of their set. They opened with FU song ‘See You In Hell’, a tonne of strobe lights and a lot energy.
Their hard rock, pop punk and electronic music is fresh but memorable, and they held the crowd’s attention throughout (despite only a handful of people saying they’d seen or heard of them previously). Apparently they’ve been mentored by Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 and it shows. Each band member is captivating in their own right and I’ll definitely be looking them up to hear more.
Next up was headliner Maggie Lindemann who took us through a 20-song, hard rock set that began with ‘Take Me Nowhere’ from her debut album Suckerpunch. Texas born Maggie can best be described as this generation’s answer to Avril Lavigne. She has pop-punk vibes, teenage angst and a lot of break up songs. Her look however is a lot more glamourous, and tonight she wore a super-short black PVC number with bare legs and poker straight hair.
The show looked to be completely sold out and most fans knew every word to every song. Despite getting through a huge number of tracks during the hour-long set, Maggie took the time to talk to the fans, asking them to sing along and mosh. She even briefly stopped the show to answer a fan’s request for her to design their first tattoo – “Do you have a pen?”. Given this is Maggie’s first headline tour, she certainly commanded the stage; strutting from one end to the other and squatting or sitting on the drum platform.
Stand out songs tonight included ‘Girl Next Door’, ‘Self-Sabotage’ and ‘Novocaine’. The crowd particularly enjoyed ‘We Never Even Dated’ and show closer ‘She Knows It’. Most of the set came from current album Suckerpunch, but there were also several from 2021 EP Paranoia. Her songs are short and sweet, very rarely lasting as long as three minutes, but that’s no bad thing – it’s worked for a lot of punk bands.
Maggie has a great and powerful voice which I’ve heard her use live on a previous occasion supporting PVRIS. Unfortunately tonight her voice was low in the mix, and there was a lot of backing track. That applied not only to the vocals but also things like the bass, which was odd given that there was a bassist on stage. Speaking of, Maggie Lindemann was backed by three supporting musicians – bass, guitar and drums, but didn’t introduce them or interact with them during the show. They occasionally interacted with each other but felt like more of a session band than part of the act.
Overall Lindemann put in a crowd-pleasing performance, commanded the stage, and certainly has enough good songs to keep up her current momentum. The tour continues to Europe over the next few weeks.
Maggie Lindemann Setlist
- Take Me Nowhere
- Scissorhands
- Self-sabotage
- Hear Me Out
- Knife Under My Pillow
- Break Me!
- Phases
- I’m So Lonely With You
- Loner
- Cages
- Girl Next Door
- We Never Even Dated
- Novocaine
- It’s Not Your Fault
- You’re Not Special
- Casualty of Your Dreams
- How Could You Do This To Me?
- Crash and Burn
- She Knows It
……………………………… - Encore
Review: Chrissie Duxson
Photographs: Ian Dunn
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