Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

By Yourself, a lesson learned by many that often the finest way to bring your truth to the front in your own time and manner. Surround your self with artists who buy into your concept and thoughts, but ultimately the artistic endeavour is one best realised in the mind of the beholder.

One of the finest, and perhaps unsung heroes in the wider world, adoptees of this wide approach of creativity is Liverpool’s Sue Hedges, a woman whose voice is as pure as silk and who brings the piano to life in much the same way as Tori Amos, but to whom carries a personality of sheer intelligence that the listener can almost feel themselves being inspired and taught a valuable lesson in music appreciation each time they press play on their machine of choice.

By Yourself (A Different Kind Of) is an album of intensity, whether in passion or in description, in the heart or through the valuable senses which have carried Ms. Hedges throughout her distinguished career, and as each track punches home with the force of an atomic bomb, but with the subtly of a gracious cat walking along a fence, and the combination is one of incredible, overwhelming intuition.

The album places the vocal and the keys in unison, it is almost of the rock divine, and as tracks such as Yesterday You Loved Me, When Will The Night Be Mine, Counting Ways I Hate You, and The Girls Are Not In Town play out the sense of beautiful anger and unrelenting sarcasm are evident, there is sorrow to be felt, there is anguish being releasee, but it is with a sharpness of wit and a patient build that sums up exactly why Ms. Hedges is a captivating listen.

By Yourself (A Different Kind Of) is enrichment across the board, the soul of the performer and the woman is undaunted, charged with a ferocity of cool, and embodying the crucial spirit of what it means to master your emotions and direct them in such a way that the authentic self is not only evident, it stands proud and firm.

Ian D. Hall