Gig review: Good Charlotte, O2 Academy, Glasgow

Bromances don't come much more bromantic than that shared by twin brothers Joel and Benji Madden, the vocalist and vocalist/guitarist respectively of Waldorf, Maryland band Good Charlotte.

Good Charlotte front men, twin brothers, Joel and Benji Madden. Picture: Getty Images

Good Charlotte | Rating: *** | O2 Academy, Glasgow

After 20 years in the music business together they’re still finishing off each others sentences, pogoing around like teens and dressing near identically in black baseball caps and sleeveless jackets artfully revealing tattooed biceps. Think the Matt and Luke Goss of over-earnest American punk-pop.

The waft of strong cheese was overpowering whenever one or both of them ad-libbed on the mic between songs. Benji before one song: “It’s the people that make Glasgow, everyone here is so nice”. Joel a few songs later: “We’re all searching for something in life… the answer”. Benji again a few songs later still: “Anyone going through a hard time right now, you came to the right place.” There was a lot of this kind of chat going on.

The Maddens hearts seem to be in the right place, though, and if your bag is accessible, faintly emo-ish guitar music of a certain millennial persuasion – more Busted than Green Day, but still just the right side of credibility – then you couldn’t have left disappointed.

The set ranged apparently at random from old songs such as Girls & Boys (which owes plenty to Blur’s song of the same name) and the apparently irony-ignorant Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, to new songs including one somewhat smugly titled Life Can’t Get Much Better, which Benji dedicated to his celebrity wife Cameron Diaz (cue shrieks from the crowd). The quality, while let’s face it never particularly remarkable, was at least consistent.