Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Thom Morecroft at Leaf. May 2017. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
If ever there is a poll for the greatest artist to come out of Shropshire, there had better be a vote included on the ballot sheet for Thom Morecroft, not that such things in the end are important but for the man who made Liverpool his home and produces the type of music in which the veins inside the body crackle and pop with shuddering excitement, to which the nerves glisten with the sweat of anticipation and the joy of the smile is never far from the lips, such an accolade is always awaiting to be said with great sincerity.
It is there in every performance he makes, a seemingly effortless motion in which his voice his absolute king and in which the value of the song writing continues to impress. It was within the airy setting of Leaf in which he was support to Roxanne de Bastion, which such temperament and guile was once more in so much evidence, that in between the songs his wonderfully placed wit was stored and in songs such as Daisy, Rabbit Eyes and the outstanding Sexy Shade of Sunburn, the poet was revealed.
Watching Thom Morecroft on stage is more than a pleasure, it is a moment in which the senses come together with the brain and applauds the beast in the mind for having good taste. The sheer introspection of the work is there on the page and with all seriousness be looked upon in the same delicate way as perhaps reading A.E. Housman, for in both gentlemen can be seen the virtue of the Shropshire Lad.
It is in the voice that the sense of the hypnotic talks to you, the slight quiver at the back of throat in which a thousand arrows of the wistful and the doomed are aimed at the centre of the lavish words and the intricate nature of the songs. The voice quivers and the voice sings, never a dull moment in between and as songs such as Give Me A Why, The Beast and the much called for encore of Coming Up For Air paraded round Leaf like a squadron of angels looking to playfully join in the festivities, Thom Morecroft once again took an audience to brink of Heaven before guiding them gently back to reality.
With a sense of hesitation it should be said of Thom Morecroft that like Housman, is the most wonderful talent who knows instinctively how to make his audience love the evening beyond compare; a soul who is immersed in his craft and can make a blind man see the sense of absolute of art.
Ian D. Hall