Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

In a not so former life, Kevin Critchley was someone you had to find, almost hunt down with anticipated musical pleasure to get to hear perform. Things move on, tides change as regularly as the passing of the moon over the Mersey on a clear night but the one thing that hasn’t changed is when you get the chance to hear Kevin Critchley play, you grab it with both hands, diminish your heartbeat rate briefly then run headlong into the musical storm headfirst, letting the crafted hailstorm like approach of notes bombarded you again and again.

As the final act inside The Baltic Social in what had been an extremely pleasurable seven hours for the Liverpool Acoustic stage, Kevin Critchley was the unmeasurable joy that waited many in the day’s set of slots. This is a man who can make music seem as though you are listening to the sound of flickering suggestions of many lives lived, of traces of a thousand uncensored heartbeats plucking away like a violin being heard in an echo chamber, moment after moment. It makes the hair stand on end just hearing the lyrics to his songs and with a new album due out later in the year, Kevin Critchley and his musical cohorts, Alex Williams on drums, Graeme Runeckles on bass and Wei Ping Wee, gave the crowd a brief taster of what to expect from this new look band.

If the six songs on offer were anything to go by, what follows on later should be of such importance that yet again the musical landscape will be affected and that can only be good as always for the once and always Capital of Culture. The sound of songs such as Brother, Whisper Your Name, Masks, the excellent Saboteur and Ghosts are songs in which to start relishing hearing again, with the track As I Disappear you should already be planning to make another space in the C.D. collection and perhaps a small placard underneath it for the ease of finding, cause it’s going to be played a lot.

Things do change; sometimes the sadness of one set of talented musicians going separate ways is enough to make you despondent, perhaps even melancholic but from the ashes always comes hope and for Kevin Critchley that hope has just reignited a big flame.

Ian D. Hall