Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
With the festival season nearly behind him, Ed Harcourt made his way to Liverpool for the second time this year and gave the crowd attending this year’s Summercamp at Camp and Furnace something extra to hang their 2013 musical memories upon.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The Baltic Triangle’s Camp and Furnace and live music are a match made in, if not Heaven, then certainly in a hotel in a short walkable distance and with a cold welcome drink provided and poured by St. Peter when you get there. Every weekend there is music to be had in the city but one of the venues that has become a vital part of the music community has that great feel of the outdoors about it and as Paul Straws’ beautiful hauntingly calm music flows throughout the building, even a wedding party guest or two from the other side of Camp and Furnace’s building could be seen enjoying the music.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Whether Matt Breen is performing acoustically or as part of some big electric effort which blows the cobwebs from the eco-system around him, there is no doubting this young man’s incredible appeal and honest likeability when watching him on stage and off it when you are in his company.
As part of the afternoons musical entertainment laid on at Camp and Furnace and with the craft fair in full swing, Matt Breen once more showed his mettle, his guile and charming disposition as he followed Gary Edward Jones and Nighthowl onto the stage and gave his usual high octane, even for an acoustic set, performance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Liverpool in the sunshine, for that matter in any weather, is a wondrous place and when the music gets its look in the summer haze it becomes even more special. The sense of history that emanates across the city is captured in how music can appear seemingly anywhere, from somebody picking up a guitar and heading down to the docks and giving the visitors an extra reason for enjoying their day out or even when it features heavily at a craft fair in a building that not long ago was more suited the grind, dirt and steel, the imagery of the dark satanic mills never too far away.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Camp and Furnace in Liverpool is an open secret, those that know about this charming cultural hive of activity cannot get enough of it and its industrial past, the relic of an industrial revolution that has gone beyond the thought of dirt, disease and dark satanic mills and has become a place of beauty. It is also a great place in which to catch live acoustic music and the slight nod to the electric.
Natalie McCool performing at Mello Mello. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Mello Mello may have been threatened with senseless closure earlier in the summer, thankfully this den of good music in the heart of the city centre, tucked neatly in amongst the bawdy and forlorn is still operating and still putting on nights of interesting and well crafted music. It is a good job really as those who watched Widnes musician Natalie McCool play her set with oodles of style may have wondered where else they could have caught this essential music maker if not for Mello Mello.