Satin Beige performing at Leaf in Liverpool. March 2015. Photograph reproduced with kind permission by Adrian Wharton.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
As Satin Beige finishes her support slot to Tommy Scott at Leaf, it’s possible to sit back and reflect upon a raw and flowering special talent that has just awoken many lost memories with her wonderful cello playing; exotic but with more than a hint of the moody regal nature that emanates from every pore and fibre of this young performer.
Fans of Stephen Langstaff will not be strangers to the young lady who has filled in the role of adding a sense of occasion to the maestro’s work which has been superbly looked after by The Mono LPs’ Vicki Mutch. They will not be thrown against the wind and buffeted by the strength of performance that is burgeoning within Ms. Beige, nor will they ever deny that as time moves on, she will be comparable with Ms. Mutch, Stephanie Kearley and Birmingham’s own but very much admired in Liverpool, Luke Moore in the art of the cello.
With the audience in Leaf in attendance, Ms Beige was afforded every possible courtesy and she didn’t disappoint those music lovers who made the evening’s entertainment, again despite the city of Liverpool seemingly putting on a show in every available nook and cranny on the night.
The memories of New York, Liverpool’s Atlantic twin in deed and thought were uppermost in the mind as Ms. Beige shone a large lamp in to the Leaf nook with her own part of the Liverpool Friday night with Goodnight Manhattan and the song Kahlua. With the first four songs being performed on guitar, the true strength of her will was felt when switching over to the highly polished cello and in the songs Losing It and Addicted, that strength was wonderfully captured and harnessed by the simple plucking of a beautiful instrument.
The final song deserves to be so well thought of that it could stride with confidence across the floor of J.F.K. Airport and have the President of Pan-America act as a baggage handler and coffee carrier. Being Me is so well observed that binoculars are binned in its presence, that high powered night vision glasses are smashed under the hefty heels of secret service men. Illuminating, full of anger and beautiful pathos, Being Me is a song to take huge delight in.
There is a huge future ahead of Ms. Beige, this is purely just the very surface being scratched.
Ian D. Hall