Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It could be Rotterdam, Rome or anywhere but as December’s cruel thoughts turn to the end of the year, as the office parties began to stack up and the songs from karaoke machines began to rotate on mass, there is in amongst the freeze to come the knowledge that it is Liverpool that Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott once again find themselves in and producing a night of music in which to dance and reflect the night away.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There has always been so much to like about Paul Heaton, a man who wears his lyrical beauty on his sleeve and who can make a grown man weep with the elegance and sly nod of his words; when you add the delightful voice of Jacqui Abbott, a woman whose own command of the slippery wink worthy English Language is as cunning as her friends and a Liverpool Philharmonic Hall rammed to the point where dancing in the aisles was not only expected but actively encouraged by the words floating with sincerity, then Paul Heaton truly found he had come home.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There are song writers of such acerbic wit and deliciously well observed lyrics that when the time comes, as it assuredly must to all, the world of music will be at pains to understand why they weren’t more appreciated in their life time. Like the 19th and 20th Century devotees of Oscar Wilde, the clamour for true recognition might go unheard by the greater population starved of such lyrical insights and yet, somewhere deep in the bowls of the immersive and beautiful grin of gratitude we surely must give thanks with, Paul Heaton will always be remembered with clarity and honour.