Last Reserves performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

You cannot help but feel that Charles Dickens missed a trick by being born a hundred odd years too early, for surely had the literary genius been around today, instead of getting Oliver Twist to ask for more gruel and thereby setting a tone on all that is be seen as insidious in the Victorian era, he instead would have had the young urchin say of the great Punk era that died in many ways too soon, “Please sir, can I have more of this terrific display of out and out rebellion and scintillating and controlled riot”.

It is a phrase to be associated with the band Last Reserves, you cannot help but want more as they renew their acquaintance, their blistering friendship of the torn down and sometimes forgotten genre, with a new front woman calling the shots, the energetic and firecracker that resides in the voice and soul of Alice, Last Reserves would certainly have given the 19^th Century novelist more than a few thousand words to write down.

There is nothing reserved about the band, vigorous to the point of a volcanic eruption threatening to explode and take apart Bootle’s green space, playful as a potion concocted within a Shakespeare performance and one that can strive ever onward; the band in this form may have only been together a few weeks and timing will come of age as the gelling process takes hold, but reserved, detached from the crowd, not a bit of it!

In a day when Bootle was to be heard enjoying itself, it might be considered odd to have new Punk fill the air; however, it is the spirit of the genre, the determination to be heard and remind people that your life is just as valid as anyone else’s that made the band more than worth in the Battle of the Bands, the festival of ever growing hope.

With songs such as Almost Roadkill, Runt, Hypocrite, a very thrilling version of the Sex Pistol’s classic Pretty Vacant and The Waste filling the set, this is a band that you want more of, that you cannot help but want to dip the middle finger into the cereal of their set and claim with Punk passion that you want, demand, more of.

Last Reserves are a band that has changed but offers new hope, one that anyone with burning anger in them will take to their hearts.

Last Reserves perform at Krazyhouse in Liverpool on September 3^rd.

Ian D. Hall