Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The year seems to be slowly ebbing away, the nights are getting darker and the absurdity of such inclement weather for the time of year is enough to install a sense of deprivation and foreboding for the winter ahead.

What Liverpool has though is the means to generate heat, warmth and an overpowering urge to shake off the blues as easily as making sure that Westminster undesirables are never able to find their way past the Mersey. That heat, that serious endeavour to keep new music coming through the ranks and the venues of the home of culture is what keeps the smiles on the faces across all sections and genres of music lovers in the city.

July may have descended into the type of damp squib that makes people long for the beaches of foreign shores but close to the Liverpool city centre home, the sound of Against The Sky played out to the crowd in Zanzibar and the spirits that had been lifted by the atmosphere and general feeling of the cool kept on giving. July may have been one that was mixed, inclement and in parts gloomier than a day trip round a Victorian Work House run by Iain Duncan Smith but Against The Sky certainly knew how to keep a good thing going and keeping the groove high and bright.

With tracks such as the impressive opener One Night Lover, Radioactive, Actors, the sedate but ear-catching Emily and Changes all being performed with care and diligence, there was much to enjoy from the band’s performance, much to take stock in and as the crowd revelled in the darkness and the light shone brightly above the group’s magnetic presence. The thought of bidding farewell to a month of partial bleakness and unexpected cold, was more than a captivating dream when the seismic boot from Against The Sky.

A band on the up and one that knows how to give pleasure where it is due!

Ian D. Hall