Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *

In amongst it all, life throws you the occasional musical curve ball in which to relish. At any festival it impossible to see every band, especially when the organisers find 140 of them in which to treat your taste buds to. All you can do is see the ones you really want to see and then hope you have enough left in the stamina box to see a couple that have alerted your radar and in which to check out.

For many that band would have been Liverpool’s The Springtime Anchorage featuring Nick Walker, Philip Ryan-Melville, Stuart Irwin and Marc Hannon.

Despite the name of the festival being the International Pop Overthrow, bands from the host city are an important cog in the wheel of the exciting week of music, you cannot have an event as good as this without some of the cream of the musical capital of the world making their well-deserved mark on the occasion and in The Springtime Anchorage they did their growing reputation all the good in the world by playing a set that was dynamic, brimming with idealism and locally nurturing. It was a sight in which to savour being part of a hopeful audience.

The band played a very cool set in which the thoughts of many would have surely turned to one of contentment in choosing such a good local band in which to support during the I.P.O. and in tracks such as I Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover Anymore, A Face Like Hers, the wonderful Nightingale Girl, Bird of Prey and Time To Change Your Mind, that good fortune turned to one in which to make sure they were performing again very soon and with half an eye on knowing a longer set would enhance the evening still further.

To hope sometimes is a futile piece of effort, yet sometimes hope can offer you a gift, a pleasurable moment of time in which it allows you to glimpse something special in the making, The Springtime Anchorage were Hope’s gift to many during this year’s International Pop Overthrow at The Cavern.

Ian D. Hall