Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Liverpool Acoustics’ new home of the Courtroom Café not only suits the requirements of the musicians who pass through the heavy wooden door and up past the six once grand steps befitting the buildings former occupants and Liverpool’s heritage, it sounds great as well, the fabric of the building, the history of the area in and around the older parts of the city somehow adding a weight of mystery and enthusiasm to the proceedings.
It is in this new realm that Liverpool Acoustics’ David Neville King takes centre stage, the humour of the man opening up a sense of perspective, a sense of the ever present smile that should be there in music, that should be there even in times of bleak unfathomable injustice or dread, for the smile kills the oppressor even more than the sullen fixated banging of the drum.
That is not to say there is no room for protest but a protest where you laugh at the insecurities of the tyrant has so much more weight to it, imagine killing someone with kindness, we all know of many that in these dark times we could cheerfully beat with a funny bone.
In this arena steps David Neville King and a set of songs that are razor like, indomitable, enjoyable and tough, they use a metaphor that is engaging and likeable, and each one of them is wrapped up in a spirit of man with a plan, not to be a firebrand but to be more subtle in conversation when it comes to tormenting the ideas of stopping in and taking on the couch potato in their own safe space.
With a set that included the beautiful instrumental opener of Waterfall, Spider, Ray Lazy Ray, the fantastic Childhood Soul in which Mr. King openly talks of the inner persona that drives us all, Vertigo Overload and the superb Pandas, humour is very much in evidence, a piece of mind wrapped in sharp observation about the everyday and the kind of society that perhaps we have become too comfortable to be in.
The Courtroom Café is a new home for Liverpool Acoustic but if it throws up a gem such as David Neville King every week there will be no complaints from those who might venture in to pass judgement.
Ian D. Hall