Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Just knowing that somewhere in the darkened hall of Zanzibar, the two women who make up the superb ME and Deboe, Mercy Elise and Sarah Deboe, are mentally going through the notes of the songs that are going to perform is enough to send the shiver of musical anticipation rushing through the veins and capillaries, the sense of the thrill to come running up and down your spine and the sliver of expectation to go into meltdown.

Before the internal explosion can happen, before the combustible elements of extreme, undiluted talent and audience nervousness can take hold, the pair come on stage and somewhere, somehow the mood lighting seems to go up a couple of notches, surely just a coincidence that the crowd are now bathing in two women, two guitars, one sensational act kind of glow.

One of the last times the pair was in Liverpool they wowed the audience that had made their way to the Bluecoat and added to the sun drenched day that the city immersed itself in, easy enough to be a big hit on a day when the summer is easy, the notes flowing like fine champagne and a crowd relaxed and full of good spirits. The measure of a great music partnership is when the dark days of winter are firmly entrenched, the very short days seem totally uninviting and the best you can do is wrap up warm under a duvet, it is those days when the resilience of the artist is tested. Never think that the test isn’t real. However like a prize fighter going the distance night after night against all the odds, ME and Deboe simply beat the winter apathy, the indifference that comes with the start of a new year and played as if the very action of their combined playing was making the heating feel like a balmy day somewhere in Cuba.

ME and Deboe have this splendid ability to make the sound they have perfected seem blistering, beautifully frantic in parts, their acoustic guitars almost like putty in their hands, moulded and shaped exquisitely to match the pace of the vocals and on tracks such as Here They Come, the brilliant Just Go, the ecstasy and melancholic anger of The Frustration Song and Mother Shipton, Mercy Elise and Sarah Deboe joined the ranks of songwriters who frequent the city of British culture and who are missed when they are not around.

The end of the dark days of January are now behind us for another year, but ME and Deboe lit up the night and made the darkness disappear for a while. Never a foot or guitar string put wrong.

Ian D. Hall