Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 81/2/10
There is a special place surely reserved in anyone’s heart for a band when they play a track that just really just gives the said organ a jolt of undisguised passion, of catching the listener unawares of its importance to them. It can happen a lot with a band that you may have followed for years, it happens less frequently with a group that has not appeared on your in built radar and yet for anyone watching Kontiki Suite in The Cavern Club on a warm Saturday night in May; that feeling of first time love was like lightning hitting the Eiffel Tower and creating a spark so wide it would light up Paris.
For Ben Singh, Marcus Dodds, Mario Renucci, Craig Bright, Chris Brown and Jonny Singh the feeling would have been mutual as they played for the second time at an International Pop Overthrow week in Liverpool. The scrupulousness and sincerity of their performance was at times scintillating, direct and full of authority. It was akin to finding someone with a handful of the answers to life’s most perplexing questions but not wanting to take any credit or payment for them. The frankness and overwhelming joy in playing the six tracks, Pages of My Mind, My Heart’s Content, Watching over Me, Here for You Now, All I Can Say and the fantastic and unbelievably crazy Magic Carpet Ride shone from the stage and basked in the audience’s whimsy.
Magic Carpet Ride was a track that you just wanted to go on forever, the fanciful and guitar sledging spectacular caught the imagination perfectly and left many in The Cavern’s iconic stage area with jaws firmly touching the floor and gathering dust in the appreciation. The heat of the day had already taken its toll on the sensibilities of the sub-conscious mind and now the barnstorming end to a terrific song was capable of tipping many over the edge, love played on a guitar string was more than ready to conquer all.
Kontiki Suite do not play that many gigs, more’s the pity, but when they play like this it doesn’t seem to matter. Terrific and mind blowing, Carlisle’s finest at their absolute best.
Ian D. Hall
Kontiki Suite, International Pop Overthrow, The Cavern, 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.