Issue 55 / May 2015

36
Bido Lito! May 2015
Reviews
nigh, those in attendance for the headliners –
and the gig is by no means a sell-out – seem
to be saying the same kind of things: “I can’t
believe I’m seeing this live”, “I never thought
this day would come” and other such rabid
expulsions of fawning adoration to befit a
music-smitten fanboy a third of most of their
ages. Although of course it’s a great shame that
Kaleidoscope never hit the heights of Floyd and
co there’s a silver lining of sorts in that they
can still get away with a low-key gig of such
intimacy.
Low-key is certainly the word – take for
example the visual accompaniment to the set:
quite literally a laptop slideshow of Google
images of the band in their prime. There’s
also the fact that there’s only one member
of the original band onstage, alongside four
far younger musicians: original leader Peter
Daltrey, garbed in a dapper velvet blazer and
cravat, to place him somewhere between
the best Doctor Who never cast and an acid
casualty Fagin.
All that pales into significance after an
opening rendition of Aries, however, Daltrey’s
voice still as woozily beautiful as ever, and as
he and his band – excellent musicians, it must
be said – drift through the legends’ stellar
catalogue with aplomb, the uncompromising
psychedelia of Snapdragon, Music and other
such outings holding their own alongside a
simply epic Sky Children.
With tributes paid to the late Cynthia Lennon
and Daltrey’s evident love for Liverpool quite
clearly reciprocated, it’s a truly heartening night;
save, that is, for that aforementioned second
problem: that the support’s small group of
fans decide to chat loudly and inanely for the
entirety of Kaleidoscope’s set. Though it’s clearly
no fault of The Wicked Whispers, it’s infuriating,
and frankly completely disrespectful that, were
it not for the headliners’ magisterial brilliance,
a transcendent night of psychedelia at its most
phenomenal may have been blunted.
GHOSTPOET
Palaces – James Canty
EVOL @ The Kazimier
Paddy Clarke
This evening The Kazimier seems very excited.
Doors having just opened, there are plenty of
people in the venue’s main space sipping beer
and talking in hushed whispers. Something
exciting is about to happen.
The first artist of the evening is JAMES CANTY,
whose guitar-driven solo musings provide foot
tapping and head nodding across the board.
The audience are appreciative and as the venue
fills up the set comes to a close. After Canty, we
have PALACES, who fill the room with reverbheavy
music that inflates the crowd like air in
balloons. They glide slickly through a set full
of lovely moments and brilliant ambiances,
and set the tone wonderfully for an evening
of musical delights. Palaces are a band with an
exciting future.
After a short break there is darkness… voices
Ghostpoet (Jack Thompson / m0nks.co.uk)
howl and scream as a figure appears on stage.
The figure is Obaro Ejimiwe aka GHOSTPOET, the
man of the moment. What is initially striking
about Ejimiwe is his stature: he is a big man
and he commands the stage with a melodic
brutality that is very exciting to watch. Without
a moment for breath, Ghostpoet storms through
the first couple of tracks from his new album
Shedding Skin. At first his vocals are lost under
a soundscape of guitar keyboards and bass but
luckily this is quickly fixed and his soft, croaky,
southern refrains become perfectly audible.
Ghostpoet has previously mentioned
an uncomfortable relationship with live
performance but as he gets into the swing of his
set this concept is hard to believe. Songs such
as Off Peak Dreams and X Marks The Spot show
why this is an artist on everybody’s musical radar.
His music brings a poetic sweetness to the gritty
painstaking routines of paying bills and going
to work. The performance has moments of real
intimacy with slow, musing tracks such as Be
Right Back Moving House which grab the heart
strings without resorting to crass clichés. It is
clear to see the transformation that Ghostpoet
has taken after his Mercury Award nomination a
few years ago. There is a swaggering confidence
about the man that slowly leaks into the wideeyed,
energised Liverpool audience. As the
evening progresses, tracks glide seamlessly into
each other as Ghostpoet leads his musicians
like a hip hop conductor. However, what is
most striking about the performance is that this
rapper is humble. Like some men who resemble
their dogs, Ejimiwe is an artist who takes after
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