Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Summer evenings can be a time of quiet introspection surrounded by friends. Amongst the jokes, hilarity and loud musings between acquaintances, mates and lovers, the calm of summer’s heat can get in your head and considerations and plans are laid out in a row of certainty. You could do that, you could sit there as the sun finally burns itself out and the crispy smell of human bacon stirs into enough life to meander lazily home, or you could make your way to a gig given by Last Line Out and really enjoy the evening.

As part of a night in which The Godfathers were coming to Liverpool and in which Steve Thompson and the Incidents were proudly justifying, as if they need to, their credentials of being one of the bands in which Liverpool should be relishing, Last Line Out gave a tremendous account of themselves and cemented the growing talk about their music and their stage presence.

There are moments in which life suggests, no matter how you are feeling, no matter that work the next day is an alleged priority or the simple fact of Time being a perpetual watchdog as it hands out lists of chores and menial tasks that should be attended to, they do not stand in the way of seeing a new band ply their rather tempting wares out for consumption. To consume or be consumed, Time can be an ally or a threat, far better to take Time aside, spank it and admonish it and then set it down to watch a band on the up.

With songs such as Going Out, Smile, Can’t Take My Soul, Blind Lead the Blind and Burn, seducing the audience, making them wriggle with untold excitement and the burning question of “Just what are they doing to the soul”, writhing and taking root in the belly of the audience, the future is being set and another name cast into the resurgent Merseyside music world.

The blind might turn their heads away and the deaf put cotton buds into the aural orifices but Last Line Out are a group in which deference is starting to bow its head and take notice.

Ian D. Hall