Confidence Man: the Australian pop-rave hedonists foster hype with their ebullient live act

To attend a Confidence Man show is to time-travel back to the 1990s and watch your siblings perform self-choreographed dance routines in your parents’ front room. Over the last few years, the Australian hedonists have fostered hype for their ebullient live act. On Friday, at the first of two sold-out nights at London’s Brixton Academy – their biggest venue yet, if you don’t count Glastonbury’s Other Stage earlier this year – their show felt less like a music performance and more like a competition between band and audience as to who was having more fun.

The long, rainy queue round the block to enter the venue – a measure implemented after the fatal crowd crush in 2022 – failed to dampen the festival-like mood of the crowd inside. Behind the two spiky inflatable stage risers that embodied the band’s goth-camp aesthetic, a large screen flashed with the words “Confidence Man loading…” in old-school video game graphic style, avatars of vocalist-dancer duo Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) and Sugar Bones (Aidan Moore) limbering up like Tekken players.

Confidence Man are con artists only in the sense that they operate under nom de plumes. Backing musicians Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie took theirs from gravestones, and remained disguised behind beekeeper-style veils all night. The flagrant miming from Planet and Bones might be considered artifice too, but of a kind to be expected from an act who describe their sound as “bubblegum warehouse”. Their song titles are explanatory enough: Does It Make You Feel Good?, Breakbeat, Break It Down (On The Bassline). Though their recent third album 3AM (La La La) was a slightly more serious paean to mid-1990s club music – begrimed east London buildings, the wonkiness of the wee small hours – they remain too pop for dance purists.

Fun was the name of the game on stage, from the elastic pulse of opener Now U Do – their 2023 hit with Sweden’s DJ Seinfeld – to the requisite euphoria of main set closer Holiday. Planet and Bones seemed hell-bent on reviving the optimism of the 1990s: they sprayed champagne over the audience, fell backwards off the stage onto a concealed mattress, changed into matching LED cone bra and shoulder pads, and welcomed British 1990s reggae singer Sweetie Irie on stage for Real Move Touch. Then there were the synchronised routines: line dancing shuffles, YMCA moves, arm windmills, hair windmills, and wobbling lifts and flips – like Strictly Come Dancing gone rogue. Their slapdash moves were at odds with the venue’s heightened focus on safety, security staff stiffening when Planet instructed the crowd to get on each other’s shoulders during set highlight So What.

But imperfection was the point. Confidence Man bring a messy punk rock indulgence to pop music, promoting a similar party attitude as Charli XCX’s Brat. Their songs don’t earn the hype the way Charli’s do, but while she may lead the charge, Confidence Man are equally capable pied pipers. “Everybody’s raving at the party of the year,” the band sang during C.O.O.L Party. That’s a fiercely contested battle in 2024, but Confidence Man are worthy contenders.

Touring UK and Ireland until Tuesday; confidenceman.com