The Whip, O2 Academy Brixton, London

The joys of being a support band. One would imagine that The Whip were reasonably excited to be invited on The Music’s farewell UK tour. The chance to play sold out venues in front of a crowd that would surely be amenable to their particular brand of electro rock.

Therefore it’s understandable that the band look visibly deflated to be thrust on stage in front of a barely third full Brixton Academy a few minutes before 8pm. And the muddy sound probably doesn’t help, but the audience appear distinctly uninterested in the efforts of the group to (ahem) whip up a rave like atmosphere.

Opening track ‘Muzzle No.1’ is fairly representative of what to expect from The Whip - dirty electro basslines, acid house keyboards, indie guitar riffs, four on the floor drums and urgent (but ultimately meaningless) lyrics. It’s normally quite a heady combination, but in an empty, cavernous venue it feels rather flat. Taking the opportunity to preview three new songs from their upcoming second album, ‘Wired Together’, it’s fair to say the band aren’t deviating too far from this blueprint, but ‘Secret Weapon’ is probably the pick of the bunch - the sound of Manchester via a package tour to Ibiza. Yet with many of their contemporaries from the nu rave class of 2007 finding that their audience have come down, grown up and moved on, one wonders how it will fare when it is released next month.

After playing for barely 20 minutes The Whip finish with ‘Trash’, and there is finally a flicker of movement and recognition from the crowd as, in unison, around 500 blokes in ill-fitting sportswear turn to their mates and say ‘Isn’t this from a beer commercial?’. It’s a tune that is capable of levelling entire fields at festivals, but tonight you can’t hear the guitar, you can’t hear the vocals and it leaves the foundations of the Brixton Academy most definitely intact.