Maverick Sabre Live Review

Maverick rattles his Celtic soul sabre.

Maverick Sabre (he should get a Mercury Prize just for that name) comes on stage in a pair of jeans, black t-shirt and crop-haired.
It’s a brave thing to start out your set with four slow-ish, laid-back tunes but if anyone can get away with it, Maverick Sabre can.

It’s that Irish charm that gets the crowd on his side with his very first “put your hands in the air!” at this, Spotify Does Pop Part Two.
His version of Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ proves that British blue-eyed soul, so long forced and a (literally) pale imitation of its American brother, has come of age.
Next up from his EP “I Can Never Be,” another soully ballad as this is “an intimate venue”.

He prefaces his next number by explaining it was written for a friend who spent a long time in prison. “These Walls” is a powerful, acoustic ditty.
It’s only natural that the biggest roar from the by-now warmed-up crowd is for his hit single ‘I Need’ which comes complete with a requisite sing-a-long.
‘You Let me Down’ should be the last track and engenders a flurry of hand-waving, but he trumps that with his reworked version of Professor Green’s “Jungle”, with its massive bass and which Maverick originally featured on.

It’s clear that Maverick Sabre does it for the craic, the poetry and the soul.
Before that, Clock Opera unveiled their glam 80s pop sensibilities displaying much of the assuredness of a chart act.
With Sparks-like falsetto vocals, shiny synths and big drums, the empty glam pops are the sound of success – the perfect sounds for a recession-hit urban landscape. ‘The Lesson Number Seven’ and ‘Once And For All’ showcased.

By Gareth Thomas