Roddy Frame

Friday 26th May 2006, Liverpool Academy 2

Set list: The Sea is Wide, Small World, Black Lucia, Stray, Rock Gods, Western Skies, How Men Are, The Birth of the True, Down the Dip, Hymn to Grace, Reason for Living, Bigger Brighter Better, Somewhere in my Heart, Oblivious, The Boy Wonders, We Could send letters, The Bugle Sounds Again, Over You.

Roddy Frame is another of those musicians who has undeservingly dropped off the cultural radar but is an artiste that is producing work comparable to his halcyon days.
With a new album ‘Western Skies’ to promote Frame, was back in Liverpool one of his favourite stomping grounds just one of many dates on a fairly comprehensive UK tour.

It is probably the last time for a while that the audience could probably see Roddy in this intimate acoustic setting, recent interviews have indicted that he is looking to put together a new touring band.

‘Surf’ and the latest record are records that are suited to being played in this style given the stripped down nature of the recordings. There is a healthy dose of older material played tonight as well and it is interesting to hear the older Aztec Camera material given a new lease of life in this format.

Roddy Frame stepped out to a rapturous applause, which showed no sign of abating all night. His beaming smile and his opening chat with the crowd indicated that he was up for tonight’s performance. He was playing to a partisan crowd who were up for old and new tunes in equal measure.
They even cheered the opening chord – which prompted Frame to tease the audience with a couple of bars from a Bob Dylan tune. ‘You are cheering and you don’t even know what is yet,’ he joked.

He didn’t disappoint with the choice of songs played tonight. The second song tonight was ‘Small World’ a song non-partisans would be familiar with as it is the tune for BBC’s Early Doors.

The newer stuff from ‘Western Skies’ was well received, especially ‘Rock God’ which began with Frame talking about his own heroes and Edwyn Collins who had recently visited. Frame informed the audience that he was on the mend and in good form after his brain haemorrhage last year.

The crowd were in as equally good voice as the turn they had come to see. ‘Oblivious’ ‘The Boy Wonders’ and ‘How Men Are’ were all sung with as equal aplomb by the audience as they were by the guy who had crafted them.

He finished with a number of classics from ‘Hard Land, Hard Rain’ – with ‘Down the Dip’ mutating into Dylan’s ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ with an extended section that saw Frame’s silhouette projected onto the backdrop in true rock god pose.

Tonight was something else and if he can be this good in this acoustic setting, one can only imagine how good he would be with a band behind him.