Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Martin Freeman, Bob Odenkirk, Adam Goldberg, Glen Howerton, Peter Breitmayer, Oliver Platt, Randy Birch, Tom Carey, Keith Carradine, Joshua Close, Carlos Diaz, Sam Duke, Barry Flatman, Eve Harlow, Russell Harvard, Karen Johnson-Diamond, Ethan Karlsend, Gordon S. Miller, Lonni Olson.
Tori Amos, Birmingham Symphony Hall, May 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Expect the unexpected, anticipate the astonishing and most of all imagine the extraordinary, for when it comes to watching Tori Amos on stage you can do more than sit there and take in the majesty of it all.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Being asked to support Tori Amos on her latest tour must feel in some cases akin to finding a winning lottery ticket from a couple of months previous and then finding its worth more than you imagined. Whilst there have been many over the years who have this very immense privilege of working with arguably one of the greatest in depth lyric writers of the last twenty years, none perhaps have seemed to enjoy the sensation as much as Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Geoffrey Beevers, Michael Keating, Gareth Armstrong, Nicholas Briggs.
If everything you knew about your life turned out to be a lie, how would you feel? If you had found out that all you held dear about yourself, the untold truths, the minutest detail of your very existence an elaborate lie placed in your mind by a master hypnotist who had somehow conveniently not reversed the flow of information to you and in doing so had turned you into a being so malevolent, would it be better to find out the truth?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When you find something so entrancingly unique, so wonderfully odd and unconventionally offbeat you just have to embrace it, nourish it and hope that it stays the distance and others see the musical imagery on offer. It arguably doesn’t come any more unique than Whiskey Moonface’s debut album One Blinding Dusky Dusk.
Little Sparrow at the Studio 2, Liverpool 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Although some artists grow on you over time, there is an argument for the thought that your first opinion of them is normally the one that is correct. With life becoming far too fast to keep up at times before the next trend or even whim, the next vogue act or person in favour on television. Sometimes you have to make a stand, draw a long line around yourself and say, bear with me as I really want to savour this thanks and in Little Sparrow, the line demands to painted over in several coats of luminous yellow paints and a few traffic stops signs flashing stop for good measure.
Susie Jones at Studio 2 in Liverpool May 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In a night that was filled to overflowing with very cool and deserving female musicians making all the headlines inside Studio 2 on Parr Street, to open up ahead of the likes of Little Sparrow, Ingrid Frosland and the superb Norwegian band Kalandra might be considered a tad daunting. However, for Susie Jones, daunting is just another word for showing exactly what you are made of and watching her and her two fellow musicians on stage, the equally cool Dave Parker and Rob Kentell, daunting was a by word for secure and musically affluent.
Michael Bolton, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There is a certain satisfaction to be gleaned from watching Michael Bolton on stage. The sheer effortlessness in which he sings, the manner of his performance and the smooth content feel of the music grabs an audience from the very beginning and long after he has left the stage there are still fans glued to their seats, mentally and physically exhausted by the intense feelings that have come from one person, one band, so utterly captivated by the magnetism of the song.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
To walk on stage infront of audience as a virtual unknown, to throw yourself upon the musical mercy of an audience that had been building themselves up for the main event, to do this whilst the spotlight glares down upon you and in some sort of electrical judgment has your life in the claws of its wiry hands and give a set of your own songs the type of true belief usually found in someone whose established credentials has seen them through a few decades; then you know you are witnessing the start of something that could go a long way to being a star of their generation.
Rick Wakeman, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are some things that are well worth the wait, even if you didn’t realise just why you had waited for them until the first note came crashing down around your senses and you were transported through time and the love of literature to a point of sheer bliss.