Photo: Alicia Rose
The aspiring Idol Minds opened Saturday night’s ‘Your Racket Club’ at the Liverpool Zanzibar. Undoubtedly, their musical brew has red hot potential to lift them quickly through the melee that is today’s pop rock. With the youth of the crowd behind them, Saint Sebastian took to the stage next. The four-piece gave a steadfast set with confident frontman Duncan Stuart steering a well-rounded performance. It’s always a pleasure to be able to decipher poignant song words and Stuart’s voice was clearly strong enough for this. Some nice country harmonics were included and overall this young band rightfully earns their place on the circuit.
While Europe-founded group The Clerks bought their electronica brand of vocals and full-on big beats to the Zanzibar boards, they also had under foot enough pedal power to enter Le Tour de France. The combined lead vocals were extremely effective, however midway through confidence trailed a bit leading to ‘sound mash’ syndrome. Manchester’s Polytechnic transpired to be disappointing. They appeared promising; with entourage et al, but performing questionable lyrics ‘I was banging the drum, you filled your ears with your fingers. Just lay there at home’ and more ooh ooh oooohs than McFly, it was enough to make you wince at times. Despite this, they were instrumentally sound at least.
Triumphantly stealing the show at the very end of the night were the enchanting Peter and The Wolf. This fantastically driven and superior trio were a welcome breath of essential originality. Both Marc Sunderland and Donna Dosanjh have extraordinarily beautiful voices; the fabulous clarity and exciting words they expose make for an astounding listen. Hugo Harrison eclipses the dynamics with his command of the bass. These are a must hear, must see collective.
