A mini Live 8 showcasing some of the finest music on the planet

Charity is a great thing. Of course you can say albeit in a very capitalist fashion, that the existence of any charity is the tacit admission of the failure of a government to fulfill it's duties to the least of us. An act of administrative esquivalence, if you like.

In many ways though, tonight isn't about a cause. I somehow doubt they would have managed to sell out Brixton Academy if it had been Johnny & The Shits curating tonights lineup, with guest appearances by The Nobodies, The Hasbeens and The Never-Weres. (all of this band names are for sale for a very modest fee if you contact the writer).

What it is is an indoor, evening long, mini Live8 : Keane headline and perform for around 45 minutes – if you include three songs where they back the rather unexceptional Lilly Allen as she peddles the musical equivalent of a slightly edgy chick flick. Other bands include a few big sellers as well. For many of the people in the room tonight, it clearly isn't about the cause, or anything but an excuse to see several quite big bands performing their greatest hits in one short evening. The overall jovial mood of the evening is occasionally dampened by the rather earnest pleadings of the ever-youthful Thingy from Keane who looks like nothing so much as a genetically modified XXXL sized 11 year old. God bless him though, he means it maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. (When Keane cover the Sex Pistols I might be more bothered about them, mind you).

The evening starts with a somewhat forgettable, and somewhat out of tuneartist whose name I can't remember ..... At a volume so low that you can have a very reasonable, normal conversation around 10 feet from the stage, and a string section who appear to spend the whole time tuning up, his set is over mercifully quickly. Or too quickly, if you were enjoying a nice chat with your friends. Brendon Benson meanwhile, is also backed by Keane, and performs 3 or 4 songs that fail to leave an impression. The Guillemots meanwhile, try their valiant best and provide the evenings first twinge of musical excitement. Like a scruffy artschool Ben Folds, the band do what they do with no small amount of style or skill. Highlight, to be blunt, is when they end, albeit leading a chorus line of umpteen drummers through a somewhat freeform song-that-becomes-a-jam. It is in short order, quite entertaining and reminded me of a less staid Beautiful South.

The first 'major' act of the evening, in my eyes are The Magic Numbers. Looking and sounding like nothing so much as a rather liberal 70's rock band, they eschew the normal configuration to bring in an entertainingly ramshackle, melodically-stuffed twenty minutes. The first song is rendered without a guitar but the band carry on anyway : in some ways this renders their sound even more unique, being a pounding train of bass and drums with the occasional keyboard flourish. Personally, I think they almost sound better without the guitar. Their set is short and efficient, dispensing four great songs in a mere quarter hour, aided with no small amount of charm. The songs sound like a child staring up with squinted eyes into the sun : an attractive mix of innocence, wonder, naivety and hope.

For me, the big draw of the night is the Pet Shop Boys. The most successful British duo of all time, with umpteen gazillion albums old, their witty, interesting, political electronic pop is both very much of it's time, and utterly timeless. The duo play the first half of their set in the classic 'duo' format : stripped of the dancers and films that they employed in the earlier summer tour, the songs stand bare and naked – and thus, are unique in their presentation and oddly versimilitudistic : “Rent” and the classic “West End Girls” are remodelled for their sleeker well-known versions into an approximation of the kind of chunky, large dance music of the Boys very earliest, vinyl-only (and long deleted) recordings : “West End Girls” manages to morph in the middle from the 1984 CBS-bounce to a sleek rock beast thanks to a revelatory middle 8. In seamless style, the curtain behind the group drops to reveal a full rock backing group dressed in the Velvet Underground's trademark leather-trousers-and-jacket-black-hair-and-shades look. The players (last seen on 2002's under-rated 'Release Tour'), expand and enhance the well-known and much-loved songs with a set of embellishments that make the song breathe. And songs like “Being Boring” say more to me about my life than the entire work of The Beatles. The set dips slightly for an interregnum of the lead single – 'Integral' – from the new album, which is here presented in its full 8 minute 12” glory. The Pet Shop Boys are an absolute national treasure, and whilst these days they are too uncool to mention, in thirty years time they will be hailed as visual visionaries who had no fear of ridicule in using themselves as icons, whilst at the same time creating some of the most effective and emotional pop music of all time : they are the Gilbert And George you can dance to, and I can't say much more than that.

Aside from the brief appearance from Lily Allen, Keane close the evening with a 30 minute 7-song Greatest Hits set : the songs ebb and flow into one cohesive whole that follow a set mood and pattern – like a castrated Coldplay, Keane (and their contemporaries) mine a narrow furrow of that peculiarly British mixture of hopeful hopelessness, exhausted melancholy and dogged determination in the face of middle class apocalypse. Following the Ben Folds template of piano, drums and vocals, Keane populate their sound with an almost-inoffensive palette and a naïve earnestness. In Tom's mind, he's probably reliving U2 at Red Rocks but here I see some great music that seems to be rather unaware of the pompousity of its own earnestness. Still, that never stopped Radiohead, did it? Being a greatest hits set, the 7 songs include the new single, most of the old Keane songs that were rather big (albeit Lilly Allen sings “Everybody's Changing”), and a very odd cover of “Under Pressure” : Keane play it utterly sincere – can they do anything any other way? (Probably not) – and thus, the song becomes both high camp, stadium pomp, a rallying call to arms, and a great big Lads-Together Oasis-style htereo singalong. Being the last night of their current year long world tour, Keane say goodbye for now in a triumphant fashion : almost the entire venue is lifted aloft by their hymns, and whilst not to everyone's taste (and not really much to mine, come to think of it), Keane certainly mean a lot to a lot of people, and that counts for something in these strange times.

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