Thursday 21/08/03 Slow Motion Stranger, Alpha Hal, Martin Grech @ Barfly, Liverpool

Slow Motion Stranger is led by the kind of person who sat at home learning to play acoustic properly, resisting the enticement of the magic of electricity or the lure of being in a band.

With this skill he, accompanied by two percussionists and a backing vocalist serve to create a mix between the music you'd hear on Discovery: Civilizations and dark and haunting vocals that accompany songs such as 'It's all about black'. Whilst Slow Motion Stranger will never fill arenas it would be well advised to pay a visit to one of their shows.

Alpha Hal could be an Idlewild tribute band - if Roddy Woomble has the singing talent of a dead goat. Whilst the band is superb, their otherwise excellent crescendos end in a confused mess. Closing their set by murdering Radiohead's 'Idioteque' is an interesting way to go about things although strangely the quality improves ten fold when half way through their singer walks off the stage. Perhaps an early case of flu.

It's been a year since Martin Grech first burst onto the scene after scoring a radio hit with his 'Open Heart Zoo' single, best known for being picked up by Lexus for a car promotion. In this time he and his band have made two prior visits to Liverpool and tonight he returns to headline the Carling Sessions.

The focus on harder and heavier material has become more and more apparent in the second and third shows, losing almost all of the ethereal and delicate songs of his first album. Whilst six months ago these songs were mixed in with the new material now it seems 'Open Heart Zoo' has become a new 'Creep' to Grech as it remains absent from the set.

Whilst it seems not all his fans are happy with this change in focus, his unique and powerful voice layered onto thick distortion is bringing fresh blood to the cause. However good his new material is, in changing he's lost that which made his group so good in the first place. Whilst a set of entirely airy songs is something nobody really wants to stand through, throwing these into the mix is something he should look hard at doing before he turns into just another forgettable rock band.

Photos by Sakura Henderson :: sakura@gigwise.com