Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To find Keith Lally in the area is to feel the calm reassurance that one might expect if you came across a local map of the surroundings and with a signpost to safety, past the storms, through the complexities of harm and the routes of dead end obliteration, it is the finding in which you know the music will guide you, in which the point of the day becomes meaningful and the endeavour of spiritual exhaustion is relieved and completely and neatly folded away.

It is in that endless search for a song to hold, in that memory of something special that ceaseless bounty is revealed and for Keith Lally, the crux of it all is that he should be bigger than he is, that his name should carry more acoustic weight than is available, at least for the moment anyway, for surely someone with this type of skill to hold an open air festival crowd’s attention, the soft acoustic touch perhaps being lost in the shadow of the for sale St. Andrews Church and the rumble of town traffic, is to be celebrated and taken on board.

Keith Lally may have been sandwiched between two rock acts, the Battle of the Bands in full swing and being gloriously held in already high esteem by the Bootle residents having come down to the old Bowling Green for the day, but what he brought to the party atmosphere, the celebration of something new and unheralded in the area for so long, was enjoyable, seasoned and delivered with the grace of a man who revels in the contentment he brings to others in an aural fashion.

As with all the acoustic sets on the day, the time on stage may have been short, may have been restricted due to the running order, but it was also deep in magic, the strings sending out notes into the air like a flutter of Red Admiral butterflies on the wing, and as they swerved with the wind, the songs Maisie, She’s Like The Sun and Feel So Free all were free to explore and to hold court, to linger a while in the space where the map said was not only safe but full of promise.

A set which many would have wished was longer but who understood the ethos of the day, for Keith Lally this was a triumph that was keenly appreciated, a joy.

Ian D. Hall