Steve Thompson at the 02 Academy in Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There are bands performing in Liverpool that to be brutally frank, you would climb off your sick bed to go and watch, or at least make sure the venue would let you take in a bed, a team of nurses and a glowering doctor, full of self-importance and unhappiness, as part of the ticket price. For Steve Thompson and the Incidents, sick bed or not, the chance to take in the sincerity and prized affection for the music on offer is perhaps enough to tempt even Lazarus out of retirement and have him storming the barricades, the arm pumped in appreciation and singing each well delivered line as though his very life depended upon it.

Ahead of his own birthday and with the regaling simpering sweat of young lust coming from the room above as one of the pretend new kings of music ploughed his way through the evening, Steve Thompson and the Incidents took the ceiling, the roof and the walls off the 02 Academy and blew their dynamic sound into the less fortunate within a few feet of their instruments and gave the word power a new meaning in any student’s thesaurus.

There are many reason to admire the band, there are many more in which to love and feel the need to spread the word as far as possible and even use a megaphone in the direction of a certain so called music publicist’s wallet and ear. For on stage, as they are in the studio, the overpowering sensation of righteous anger and the grumbling fortitude to stick a couple of fingers with quiet sincerity up at the sycophantic ineptness of plastic music is more than enough to make the group just a brilliant act to watch.

Love in the City, Me Not You, the superbly elegant and damning Tell Cowell We’re Coming To Get Ya, arguably one of the songs of the year in Rainbows, I Don’t Care and Deep Undercover were played with craft, guile, steaming anger and fury which flowed and bounced off every sinew and fibre in the o2 Academy and in which must have felt like Heaven had split open and had the plastic muted musicians close by and far off quivering in their shadows.

Watching Steve Thompson and the Incidents is like being at privy to the Anfield boot room of old when Liverpool were, rarely, on the wrong end of a half time pummelling, the ferocity of spirit, the presence of mind and the genuine willingness to be better than anyone else, is palpable and gratifying. A top notch gig given by a great band.

Ian D. Hall