Michael Sutton, St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool. Augist 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Imagine playing in your first professional football match and it being the F.A Cup Final, you score a Hat-Trick, clear the ball off the line saving a certain equaliser in the last minute and being told by the Manager that Barcelona have put in an offer for you. Or if that sounds too far-fetched, being elected to Parliament on the wave of popular opinion, keeping all your promises, being hailed a World-Statesperson and somehow being someone of such high moral value that you only take a salary in keeping with the lowest earners in your constituency; none of that possibly compares to playing your debut gig in the open air venue of St. Luke’s and being sensational. Surely the latter is the hardest to believe.

For Michael Sutton that moment he stepped up on stage inside St. Luke’s and performed on the same patch of lovingly overgrown soil that had housed Liverpool legends a couple of weeks before hand and the likes of British Sea Power, Amsterdam and local favourites The Mono LPs, will surely stay with him for the rest of his life. Even if he goes on to bigger and better things in the years ahead, and one can only hope he does, that singular speck, that fraction of an instant in the history of the Universe will always be allotted to him and his outrageously good voice and lyrical persuasion.

Having been drafted into the line-up at the last minute especially is enough to tip your hat at him in acknowledgement of a job well done.

With four songs in which to impress, or at least keep the audience inside St Luke’s going till the next act, Michael Sutton more than filled the space around him with so much artistic freedom that the first gasp of astonishment from a patron at the back was audible between the tracks. Such was the appreciation nobody seemed to dare breathe in case it put the young man off his incredible stride.

Kicking off with the song Woke Up This Morning and following it with Beautiful Bit***s announced the sincerity of his performance, following it up with Bittersweet Irony and the fantastic I Miss You Out of Spite sent out a message that there was enough in this young man to get just more than a little excited over.

You can only dream of a rip roaring debut whatever your field of chosen creativity, for Michael Sutton that dream was realised, the hard work now starts but this is one man more than capable of bridging the gap between hard work and creative completeness.

Ian D. Hall