Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The storming finish, the band that gets people up to dance and forget the finite detail of the week they may have had, the month they have had to scrape through, that band is worth its weight in gold. It may be the one that you turn to when all seems desperate, the loose ended feeling, your all time favourite from decades past, yet a band that can calm the nerves, stop the pressure from boiling over and take you out of your head as a Saturday folds itself away into the past forever, that is the band in which to really be seen with. There are a few of them in Liverpool, in the freshly young bracket that are 21st Century delivered, they all stand out, as too does the final group in the Battle of the Bands, the festival of musical things on the bowling green lawn in Bootle – Hegarty.
Hegarty are a band in which the music flows like water turned to scotch, the party in full throw and in the shadow of the dominant St. Andrews Church, almost as if the wedding of Cana had found itself going past its allotted kicking out time and finding its way merrily to the town of Bootle, picking up music lovers on the way and finding the excuse to have one last hurrah, the bride jumping up and down with glee and the crowd urging her to keep singing.
Hegarty are a band of cool introspection, they are not aloof, they urge their fans up close without having to say a word, the welcome is all in the sound of the guitar, of Waka Staffo’s drums pounding out time as if holding onto a heart of an alien being who is keeping a secret pulse going and in the lyrics of a man who knows that life is always to be forged anew. It is to that end that the final band of the day in the heart of Bootle, should also be the one that blew the cobwebs of the town’s malaise away.
With songs such as Won’t Go Down, Hope it’s Not Forever, I Don’t Want Your Love, Broken Soul, the enjoyable re-reading of Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child of Mine and I Only Dream all performed with dedication, genuine class and the vision that is required to dare suggest that the festival should go ahead every year. This was Hegarty’s moment, the symbol of destroyed repression in a wilderness, one that made music weep with joy to be released in such a setting.
Hegarty may one of a hundred post 21st Century bands to capture the Merseyside beat but they also blaze their own trail, an honour to see them perform in Bootle.
Ian D. Hall