Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Dave O’ Grady is just one of those musicians that no matter how many times you see him during a year he still manages to make the gig you are attending feel as though it is the most important gig you will ever see him perform at. His manner is intoxicating and the voice he possess an absolute gift to audiences, so much so that whether you catch him on the street or in the acoustically dramatic venues such as Leaf or the main theatre inside the Unity on Hope Place, crowds will take him to their heart and the superb music along for the ride as well.

Aside from his own delightfully worked compositions, Mr. O’ Grady is perhaps one of the finest exponents that resides in the city of Liverpool who actually makes a cover version truly his own. It is a work of art watching him turn the attractiveness of Tim Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter and the dynamic and blistering Beastie Boys seminal track (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) into music of beauty, of incredible depth that really shows how, if you are going to cover a classic, then give it an edge, something different in which to give those who have come to see you a reason to be enamoured. In this respect Mr. O’ Grady does it with absolute joy and the sly smile of a man who knows what music means.

As always though the main bulk of Dave’s great acoustic guitar work and his sharp and unfettered and unhindered voice is with his own work and in his set at the Unity Theatre he unveiled a couple of new songs which will surely stand alongside his previously released work as if two giants were going head to head, equally matched in all departments but humble enough to register the other’s amazing quality. The superb False Hope, in which had the audience in near rapture and the excellent Petty Tyrants, for which Mr. O’ Grady spoke with that remarkable glint he has in eye that to get rid of those who do you down from your life, the lyrics of which seemed to resonate with several members of the crowd, were received with great warmth.

Closing the set with Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart was a master stroke. As he cajoled the audience to sing, some maybe reluctantly at first but with some great gusto by the end, he slowly made his way back into the shadows of the back stage, his job done and with the flourish you would expect from this amiable and excellent musician.

Ian D. Hall