Rumours Of Fleetwood Mac at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, March 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

It cannot be easy being bracketed as cover’s band, especially when you have the ringing endorsement of one of the group ring loud and clear across the venue in which you are performing in and every note sound as delicious, as astoundingly melancholic and brutally sharp as anything the main band in question laid down in their fifty year career. This perhaps is arguably compounded when the band are on tour themselves within a few months and that same band is held with so much deep affection that it crushes the heart and causes shortness of breath. For Rumours of Fleetwood Mac though, they have that endorsement for a reason, they truly capture the soul, the very essence of what Fleetwood Mac represents.

For Rumours of Fleetwood Mac, it has been a long tour and one in which has been highly praised, and rightly so. The band,  Amanda Kostadinov on keyboards and vocals,  Allan Hughes  on guitar,  Ben Hughes on guitar, James Harrison delivering scintilating bass, Alan Cosgrove on drums, Louise Rogan replicating the haunting voice of Stevie Nicks and Dave Goldberg playing keyboards and taking over the vocal duties for the bands step back to the furthest reaches of the discography in their absorbing Blues period, have played to so many sold out and appreciative audiences, that coming home to Liverpool could be seen as a mixed blessing, yes the need for a long and well deserved rest is paramount, but also the soft double edge that accompanies it is one in which all the hard work, all the incredible music, will be missed.

The Philharmonic Hall is no stranger to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac hurdling over the chairs to an attentive crowd, not unfamiliar to the scrambling and sheer delight taken by the audience in hearing tracks such as Seven Wonders, Second Hand News, Silver Springs, the delicate and superb Songbird, Tell Me Lies and Everywhere being performed with vigour and healthy panache, but that doesn’t stop the iconic Liverpool venue rocking, throbbing and being generally having caution thrown to the wind in style.

With the night paying homage to nearly every part of Fleetwood Mac’s long career, there was something for everyone who made their way to the Philharmonic Hall. The evening, as scintillating as it was for the era in which Lindsay  Buckingham and Stevie Nicks brought to the band, and in which Rumours of Fleetwood Mac gave wonderful due diligence to in songs such as Isn’t It Midnight?, Big Love and the expansive brilliance of Tusk to the stage; they also bought back sharp memories of when British Blues was King in the Peter Green era in songs such as The Green Manalishi, Black Magic Woman, the beautifully serene Albatross and arguably one of the greatest songs ever recorded in Man of the World, all were delivered with perfection, elegance and powering precision.

Fleetwood Mac may be on tour soon but there can be no doubting that in Rumours of Fleetwood Mac the sound has lived, breathed and been exulted in their absence.

Ian D. Hall