Live Review: Kae Tempest - O2 Brixton Academy, London 08/11/2025
Ten years on from his last performance at Brixton Academy, Kae Tempest returns home to South London a “completely different person,” with a show simply overflowing with love, joy and confidence.
Mercury Music Prize-nominated, award-winning poet, playwright, author, musician and perhaps one of the greatest wordsmiths to come out of the UK - Kae Tempest is simply unstoppable. With all of the above and then some under his belt, 2025 might be the most pivotal year yet for the South London artist. This year saw the release of their fifth Mercury Prize-nominated album, Self-Titled. A gorgeous, raw piece of work which focused on the exploration of Tempest’s own gender identity and rediscovery. Tempest kicked off the UK leg of his Self-Titled tour in Brixton on Saturday night, with an emotional performance that put their rediscovery in the limelight, and saw them receiving the warmest welcome home.
Before Kae took to the stage, beloved Scottish acoustic artist Jacob Alon took it upon themselves to warm up the excited crowd. Standing in a halo of light, Alon, accompanied by their guitar, filled the venue with angelic vocals. Their set consisted of songs from their debut album In Limerence, including Liquid Gold 25, “a song for all the divas…it’s about poppers and grindr”, the Scottish singer laughed as they began the plucking of their guitar. Proving themselves to be a fellow master of words, Alon serenaded the crowd further with songs such as Of Amber and Fairy in a Bottle, which really showcased the artist’s impressive vocal range. After Alon’s set, the crowd were treated to a short but sweet DJ set by two of the members of Fontaines D.C.
As a billowing sheet that hung beyond the stage slowly began to light up, and Tempest’s keyboard/synth player, Pop Roberts, started to play, the audience held their breath. ACT I - I WASN’T READY was projected onto the sheet as Kae Tempest walked onto the stage to a chorus of cheers from the crowd. The artist, a blazing presence in their two-piece suit and a beaming smile, was about to take his audience on a three-part journey, and this was the very beginning.
Act I of the set was predominantly made up of tracks from Kae’s older discography. The crowd stood silent, in awe, through the South Londoner’s performance. Kae’s hauntingly beautiful spoken word fills the entire venue; there is something almost religious about it. Flowing between beloved tracks, the venue is silent, you could hear a pin drop as Tempest holds his audience captive. “I love your sleeve-pulling nervousness / I love the way you crumble into chalk at your edges / I love the way you fade into a sky that is as endless as your willingness to try / keep going and it will get better,” the pulsing beat of the synth not dissimilar to that of a heartbeat as Tempest recites Salt Coast.
Tempest never falters, never slows, flows as seamlessly as a river between his tracks. The soft, jazzy, rippling sound of Firesmoke has the crowd swaying gently, soaking in the poet’s words, “I watch her dancing by the window and it rips my flesh to ribbons / and the whole world is just ripples…we move like we were born to move / the night is teeth and pistons and there is something in this tenderness that makes me want to live.”
And there is a tenderness in the air, Tempest breathing life into his audience, and in return, they breathe life into him, the people who have been with Tempest since the beginning. He acknowledges it multiple times throughout the set, the importance of playing Brixton Academy, and what it means for them. “Every single song that you’ve just heard, we wrote in Streatham. This is from here, and you’re here…I even played here like 10 years ago, and I am a different person, how fucking beautiful, thank you so much for being here with me.”
Tempest is radiant on the stage, and the feeling of love and joy envelopes the whole of the venue in that moment. It feels like both a homecoming and a new beginning. Before Act I ends, Tempest performs some of his most loved tracks, More Pressure and People’s Faces. People’s Faces is forever heartachingly beautiful, and the crowd can’t get enough.
And so Act II begins, YOU’LL NEVER BE READY flashes upon the screen, as the heavy, triumphant sound of I Stand On The Line begins. Kae Tempest dominates the stage; his presence fills it in its entirety as he works his way through the tracks of his latest album, Self-Titled. The crowd erupt for Statue In The Square, and the performance of it feels poignant, passionate, perfectly executed in only a way that Tempest can do as he stomps up and down the stage, “they never wanted people like me around here, but when I’m dead, they’ll put my statue in the square.” It’s a protest, an act of defiance. Other pieces included Know Yourself and Diagnoses. The lyrics “I’d be more worried if we weren’t more disturbed” flash across the curtain in rainbow lights during Diagnoses.
The final act, Act III, I SHOULD PROBABLY END THE SHOW, sees Kae perform a piece of spoken word, a mix of all his previous work, putting all the years of pain and love and joy together for this very moment. “My friends, there’s nothing wrong with us, it’s the world that’s broken…so make forever with me now…I don’t want to see this finish, I don’t want to see this finish.” There is a heaviness in the room as people realise the end is near. That they have been privy to something special, been invited into a safe space, a witness to something raw and honest and filling.
Kae closes the show with their own version of George Michael’s Freedom, and is joined on stage by Jacob Alon, Leah Cleaver and her keyboard player, Pops Roberts, for the final performance. The final scene of the act is one of pure love, pure joy, all of them radiant as they stand on the stage, the crowd cheering and dancing along, overflowing with love themselves.
There is no talent quite like Kae, and as people trickle out of the Academy at the end of the night, there is a magic in the air that everyone wants to linger in. The magic that is Kae Tempest.
Words by Angela English
