Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

In the end it is how you approach life that makes you stand out, despite what the day may throw at you, no matter the events leading up to the moment you take the stage upon; you glare in to the lights, you see the audience’s own hopes and dreams reflected back at you, and you sing and perform as if the world and its consequences don’t matter. For the point is simple, you do everything in your power to sing as if you are bringing the night to an end at Madison Square Garden, that you are saying Goodnight Manhattan.

There are though the consistencies in life that you know will always raise a smile on the lips of the audiences who come in search of music, the ones to whom the passion is never spent, that find every waking hour is consumed in the pursuit of a story forthcoming, a song worth its weight in gold. It is the pull of the cello and the addition of the drum pattern created for the session by Adam Fairclough, that sees the extraordinary talent of Satin Beige take to the stage at Constellation as part of Shout About It Live and wow the hearts once more.

The cello is an instrument of incessant beauty, the heartache it causes as the strings are either plucked soulfully, or in the heat of absolute expression, the bow packing a punch of such delight that it causes the same heart to leap in praise; Satin Beige has long been an advocate of using that punishing skill to full effect, and for those that have not been able to witness her playing for a while, the addition of Mr. Fairclough by her side, only extenuates that feeling of the absolute she has been able to bring to the audience’s ears.

Consistent and passionate, the smile of a thousand hearts leaping at the command of the bow, it is very much like watching rain drops bouncing off a series of umbrellas, the thunderstorm a catalyst for a show of natural phenomenon dancing in the mind of the man-made.

With songs such as Addicted, Love Drunk, Like You Did Before, the exceptional Being Me, So Unoriginal and the tireless beauty of Goodnight Manhattan all leaving their indelible mark on the afternoon’s proceedings inside the venue, it is safe to say that as ever Satin Beige took hold of life and made it, quite rightly, her own; as assured, as delicate, as exploding with musical rage, as the fan and the newcomer to her music could ever wish for.

Ian D. Hall