Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

As last minute replacements go, to find the exceptional Sophie Anderson standing on stage ready to blow the audience away in one fell swoop constitutes the beginnings of a very fine evening out.

Sophie Anderson may have found herself at a loose end on a Sunday evening in the biting cold that has come back for a second go this winter but once inside the Lomax on Cumberland Street there was no stopping this young woman from showing her magnificent vocal range that wonderfully left people taken aback in its animalistic brutal sensational quality.

There is a quality to Sophie Anderson’s vocals that could make mountains quake in fear and at the same time quell the anger of a raging beast. She uses her voice, which sounds remarkably like a fusion between Marcella Detroit and Grace Slick, to draw attention and eagerly make the audience pay attention. Certainly you use whatever arsenal you may have at your disposal to achieve this but it doesn’t seem fair on the audience to find this surprise entry into the Lomax giving you both barrels as you pick up your chin from the floor.

Admittedly because of time constraints, Ms. Anderson was only able to perform five songs but in the scheme of things they were a delightful mix of her own compositions a couple of covers thrown in for good measure. There may be an over reliance by young acts to litter their set with modern day covers, it can be infuriating but when they make it their own, they go back in time and look at the songs from 40 or so years ago then it becomes interesting.

Alongside her own tracks of The Doctor, the sublime Jacks and Bells and Twisted Tongue, Sophie Anderson performed Me and Bobby McGee, originally recorded by Roger Miller but made famous by Janis Joplin and the brutal Darby Slick number Somebody To Love.  This track summed up the short completely, nobody does this song better than Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane…until now.      

Sophie Anderson in one night joins the likes Jo Bywater, Elizabeth Kerney, Mersey Wylie, Ragnhild Ohren Nordset, Carrianne Hayden and countless other incredibly talented Liverpool based female musicians and singers in her absolute relentless ability to shake cobwebs out of the bodily system and engage with her distinctive and outstanding voice.

Ian D. Hall