Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If Liverpool Sound City taught audiences across the area anything, aside to expect great music all day and every day, it was to expect the unexpected. The singular moment when a band comes up on stage that the audience has never heard of and near enough blows them away with their catchy music, their incredible enjoyable insanity and overall charm providing a great excuse to check out other group from the same country on the off chance you have missed something incredible. In the sublime Lee and the Lovedaddies there surely cannot be any better as this foursome from Belgium are off the scale.
The band members were delightful and easy to watch and get to grips with. With Kurt De Waele on drums, bass player Luc Waegeman, Zaman on guitars and the energetic and brilliant Nathalie ‘Lee’ Van Laecke proving vocals that were just a joy to behold and in many ways the perfect front woman as she bobbed, teased and cajoled the crowd into joining in and taking a little piece of Ghent with them home.
The powerpop sensations were up against it as they followed the likes of Soul marvel Norman Kelsey and Californian legend Adam Marsland on the stage but as with anything, the underdog comes shining through. Not they would ever see themselves in that light as the music, the considerable demeanour and blatant breathtaking attitude would see them welcome back to Liverpool, preferably as soon as possible.
It takes a great mind-set to stand in front of a foreign audience and press home your message that your songs are bold, un-blinkered and bouncing with so much zest it would make a lemon envious. As Lee and the Lovedaddies took the crowd on a musical mystery tour from the low country it was possible to see the type of addiction musicians can only dream of seeing on the faces of their audience. Their certainly was no problem with the band’s mindset as they performed songs such as Everyman, Now I Know, the outstanding Not Me, Upside Down and the killer Cocaine, this was a band to enjoy, to revel in the way they took on preconceptions and applaud from the very pit of the stomach.
It takes guts to come from across the channel and pave the way for others to come over and make the British enjoy what goes on in the continent. Lee and the Lovedaddies are surely only the start.
Ian D. Hall