ME And Deboe at The Bluecoat in Liverpool. August 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To dislike ME and Deboe is to have the same outlook as a block of stone being chipped away by the most inept and undedicated of Masons, for just to be in front of Mercy Elise and Sarah Deboe is to understand that music is the most perfect of pursuits.

Recently the pair have wowed, stunned and musically tore apart audiences in America and rightly so, a nation in which at times you can’t help but realise takes British artists more seriously than a bands home grown crowds. Keeping up with their diary has been in which several reveals were opened up before anybody who takes a keen interest in these of things would have hugged themselves tightly in the thought that ME and Deboe were going down so well in the various cities they were playing.

This respect for Mercy Elise and Sarah Deboe certainly flew back across the Atlantic pond with them, perhaps arguably in first class, pampered with exclusive offers and a good inflight film and in The Bluecoat, that respect was amplified and strengthened as if all barriers that were in the two women’s way were scattered to the wind, shreds of twisted emotions dispersed and placed at the feet of those standing in their way.

Me and Deboe are loved because of who they are and for what they achieve when they take to the stage, in old parlance they straddle the stage like gunfighters, the emotion of the old west in their hands but instead of battling it out with six bullets, this six stringed affair is even bigger spectacle, a draw in the heat of the day in which the only causality is the fluttering heart of admiration, the songs tend for the wounded beast and healing is the order of the day.

With ME and Deboe, the audience knows they are in the hands of masters, they know their musical needs will be met and cared for, nurtured like a poem in the hands of a professor. With the songs placed before The Bluecoat audience, the only regret of the day was the understanding that recently America has had more of these two women’s time than a Liverpool crowd who knows and loves the harmonic display and in which ME and Deboe give Simon and Garfunkel a run for their money.

Songs such as Forward, the amazing Just Go, Glass Face and the outrageously enjoyable Mother Shipton all made up for America having this superb duo in their musical back yard at the expense of their British fans. However for anyone who has watched these two women go from strength to strength since they got together, to read the updates of their time in that expansive and welcoming country is to feel gratification and pleasure for them and their endeavour, the adventure is not over, how can it be when so much talent growls like a pride of lions within the scorching guitar riffs and undeniably great lyrics.

With America calling now, the only thing to do is book up a flight to be there when they perform for the citizens of the country, for the distant cousins across the pond will need to know that British audiences love them just as much.

Ian D. Hall