Ella The Bird at the Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

How often can you honestly place your hand upon your heart and swear that you have uttered the word wow, that three little word that escapes like a phantom, never knowingly seen or oversold into the ether, as you have watched a support act on stage? It happens, like the rising of the sun, just because you don’t see it every day doesn’t mean that it has forgotten to poke its head above the misty horizon and bounce its rays straight into your eyes. It happens, perhaps once in a while, perhaps once in fifty gigs, but it does happen and listening to Ella The Bird performing on stage before Justin Currie made his own wow effect on the Epstein Theatre audience; the very sizeable wow was heard from somewhere in the audience and the small smile of contented reality bit home.

Ella The Bird has a voice on her that somehow just resonates across time, through walls and across boundaries. Like Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald or Kate Bush, once you have heard this young woman hit the top note, you are captivated, hypnotised and transfixed for the rest of the set, and beyond. This is a woman who could make the most exotic of songbirds put on a brown, dusty flat cap, place a for sale sign on their particular nest and give it all up for a life of solitude in a silent order of monks.

To have uttered wow is no sign of disrespect to anyone who has performed in the last year in the Liverpool area, it seems though that something’s are meant to catch you unawares, that they are meant to see you unprepared for the moment in which belief is shaken and in which a bright new star filters through that damp mist.

A packed out audience inside the Epstein Theatre, a crowd that had suffered metaphorical blisters upon its feet as it raced to get the best seats for the act to follow, looked engrossed and enraptured by the songs The Time Of A Woman, Believe In Everything and Galileo. Ella The Bird’s set was so complete that it was truly a disappointment that she only had a five song set in which to show her wares off to the Liverpool crowd.

Five songs though is enough to get hooked and as the final note carried into the air and the spotlight faded and turned cold, a resonating tingle still played long down the spine.

Wow may be a three letter word but its effect is endless and for Ella The Bird, it is a world of endless possibilities.

Ian D. Hall