Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
As Threshold goes from strength to strength so too does Liverpool Acoustic’s near legendary Saturday set inside the Baltic Social; the complete takeover of the sound that emanates around the building as if a good branch of witchcraft or wizardry was involved in providing sanctuary for songs and music of every conceivable acoustic fashion.
It is a partnership that works wonderfully, Threshold and Liverpool Acoustic and it is no wonder when the aims are the same and the cause is more just than a knight of old perched upon a gleaming stallion, lance in hand and sworn to protect the sound of a acoustic guitar and the lyrical response; it is a day in the calendar not to miss.
If the Saturday takeover of the socially interesting and abundantly attention grabbing Baltic Social goes from strength to strength then it is down to the absolute cream of music that the organiser’s get to choose from each year, the talent in the city and beyond just getting bigger and better each time. To headline, to kick off the Saturday is no place for the faint-hearted, so much rests on the shoulders of the act that puts an acoustic smile on the face that welcomes in Spring and in 2016 there could be no better place to start than with the very superb Mona Lisa Twins.
The ears might find themselves at times lamenting the fact that they were born into a generation where the sound of the Mersey Beat was long gone, a distant memory passed down like some secret whispered through the vapours of Time, yet as the Mona Lisa Twins played, that secret, the hazy smokescreen of a Time passed in the vapour, sprang to life, if the Beatles had returned to live out their lives in the spirit of the two women that make up the core of the band then they could not have been more pleased, for this is a group that truly does the deserve the title of Beatles-esque but with a sense of beautiful humility in their work that might have been misplaced at times in the throngs of the 60s Cavern.
With songs such as This Boy Is Mine, It’s Alright, the fantastic Hey Waiter, One More Time and Club 27 being performed, the steady flow of people into the Baltic Social was being sent a very clear message, this is how to open an afternoon of music, lots of fuss, masses of vocal excess and above all, a group that knows and relishes the city it is performing in.
The Mona Lisa Twins have been pleasing the music scene for a while and yet they never give anything less than the audience can handle or deserves, this is their truth, one steeped in a whisper from the past but given dynamic female edge and blistering smile, a superb way to kick off Liverpool Acoustic’s legendary Saturday at Threshold.
Ian D. Hall