Boo Hewerdine at the Music Room, Liverpool, November 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The music of Boo Hewerdine may draw you in, the elegance of easy virtue and taste adding spice to the occasion but it is also his dry humour, his self- depreciation and anecdotes of a profession well lived that catches the attention of his live sets.

To many in the Philharmonic Hall’s Music Room, Boo Hewerdine is a colossus of British music and as he went through the near countless songs at his and the gathered audience’s disposal, there was no arguing with that simple and honest fact of artistic life.

For the uninitiated in the audience, those to whom were relatively few, the raised eyebrows peering gently over the top of his insightful glasses and lyrical mind said many things and the music created a field in which the music was able to run free and without hindrance. Boo Hewerdine arguably takes life as it is meant to be seen, full of absurd pathos, the constant battle to show the conformists and the beige that life is not just existence, but that it can be grasped, gently mocked and by adding simple pleasures such as listening to well versed stories and excellently derived tunes, it can be, it must be, seen as fun.

Opening the set with the gracious and compelling World’s End, the saintly march, with devilish glint in the eye, began in earnest and My Last Cigarette, covered with a chord of professionalism by K.D. Lang, settled the drive into abundant musical countryside with the top down, the smoothness of character assured and a meaningful night of a musical journey filling Time with hope.

Eddi Reader features prominently in Boo Hewerdine’s life and the song The Patience of Angels was always going to be well received by the Music Room’s audience. Along with the songs The Man That I Am, which featured Dave O’ Grady’s pedal steel guitar player Adrian Gautrey, the incredibly sensual and powerful Bell, Book and Candle and the temptation of Muddy Water all gave more than enough reasons to understand that colossus does not have to mean giant, it just means to have strength of will and be humble in your work.

A very cool night at the Philharmonic Hall’s Music Room, Boo Hewerdine made the night not just splendid but gave the day that extra warm hug of appreciation.

Ian D. Hall