Alexandra Jayne at the Unity Theatre in March 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The celestial heavens opened above the U.K. and the thought of the majesty and awe of space was offered to all below, the dance between Sun and the Moon a peek at what made our ancestors shudder with fascination and perhaps fear but in the skies above a 21st Century Earth. As eclipses go, certainly over Liverpool, it wasn’t the most auspicious of moments, but that did not stop one star shining brighter and with greater meaning attached at this year’s Liverpool Acoustic Festival at the Unity Theatre.
For the former University of Liverpool student, Alexandra Jayne, the last couple of years have been an absolute blast of emotions, juggling work, a budding career and the hard work entailed in building towards a University degree takes huge swathes of dedication and perspiration. Alexandra Jayne has always been good, she has always thrilled a crowd, but when the fates align and everything is in place, well at the Unity Theatre she was beyond exceptional, a performance that arguably only 40 or so people witnessed, but like the Solar eclipse, it should be considered headline news, certainly in the place she called home for several years.
Alexandra Jayne was in huge colossus like local company on the first night of this year’s Acoustic Festival at the Unity Theatre. With Natalie McCool, Shannen Bamford, Thom Morecroft, Southbound Attic Band and Neil Campbell chomping at the bit in readiness to place a great tune infront of an appreciative audience, it was Alexandra Jayne who blew people’s minds in the upstairs section of the festival.
Anybody who has seen this natural progression of her work should not be surprised by the depth of feeling that was taken in by the audience, the appreciation of the music almost seismic as a million pins could have rained down on the roofs of all the buildings in Hope Place and the Moon deciding it had enough of living in the unromantic Sun’s shadow and bursting into flames, nobody would have moved a muscle, such was the attention placed upon the Midland’s singer/songwriter.
With songs such as The Water, Who I’ve Become, Better Life, the sublime Clumsy Love, Hullabaloo and the epic Troubadour, this was perhaps one of the epic gigs in the city by a female artist in the last few years, equalled in parity by Me and Deboe in 2014 and the likes of Natalie McCool, Lizzie Nunnery, Grethe Borsum, Kaya Herstad Carney, Little Sparrow, Maaike Breijman and Kathryn Williams before them.
Some moments in time are beyond the reach of a telescope, the real mystery and majesty takes place in the darkened room of a theatre, it might not be witnessed by all, but those that hear the voice, see the confidence, know that they have seen greatness in action.
Scintillating, jaw dropping and a true pleasure in which to be spell bound by, Alexandra Jayne is truly missed on the acoustic circuit in Liverpool!
Ian D. Hall