Sophie Anderson at the Zanzibar in Liverpool. July 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There was a time when Sophie Anderson might have thought that the day had gone well to be called up at the last minute and asked if she was free to do a set at The Lomax. However, so much can happen in two and a half years, so much can take place and what was considered bountiful and awe-inspiring can undergo such transformation that the musical butterfly with a voice somewhere between Grace Slick and Marcella Detroit has become even more needed as a guide vocal, a motivation to young women everywhere and the voice; the voice has become rapturous.

A busy weekend ahead was promised, Sophie Anderson and the evening at Zanzibar was just the start and as the mid-July evening settled down to its heady mixture of sultry awareness and revolutionary tactics of sweat enhancing discomfort. Ms. Anderson opened the night ahead of The Sneaky Nixons’ headline act with half a dozen songs that really captured what this young woman is all about. Bright, intensely cool and that voice, it gets down deep into your soul and somehow finds the necessary playful abandon in which to destroy and cultivate, to raze to the ground any pre-conception and to nurture the true response required in which appreciation forms.

It is that twin demand that has seen Ms. Anderson become who she is, already cool to watch, as anyone who was at The Lomax all that time ago could attest with hand on heart, now though there is a demeanour of the warrior. The single combatant with the guitar ready for action down by her side, armed, pulsing with imagination and quivering at the thought of mayhem, or at least the power to beguile; it is an image that the audience cannot help but admire and wish to be alongside as the battle rages.

With the songs The Sisters, Jack + Bells, I Can’t Get Enough, The Healerman, Fool’s Game and The Doctor all playing their part the weekend of tuneful repose opened up before Ms. Anderson. Music at Leaf to follow but also a huge nod of just how far she has come in the last three years as she prepares to open arguably for the biggest gig of her life so far.

Distance wise it’s not that far from the Zanzibar Club to the Philharmonic Hall but in terms of numbers coming out and staring directly at you, it may as well be the space between poles, yet as this young lady more than admirably demonstrated inside the encouraging, welcoming atmosphere of Zanzibar, this is a young lady who can more than hold her own.

A terrific set by a class musician and whose voice just holds you spellbound.

Ian D. Hall