Boo Radleys

Boo Radleys (Tivoli, Dublin)

AS USUAL, it was the bloke standing next to me in the Gents who summed it up best. “They’re a baldy Beatles,” he opined whilst making room for another couple of pints and if it wasn’t for the fact that, well, my intentions might have been misconstrued I’d have lent over and shook his hand.

The Boo Radleys are indeed Liverpool’s new Fab Four and the ‘house full’ signs that went up before midnight underlined that their days of cult obscurity might finally, after an obscenely long length of time, be coming to an end.

It’s a tired old cliché, sure, but ‘a perfect pop moment’ is the only way to describe set opener ‘Carol-Ann’, a leurve song of stunning simplicity and brain-numbing hummability. Lead singer Sice may indeed be follicly-challenged but what he lacks in hair, he more than compensates for with a voice that could probably make the Ryantown theme sound like a certifiable classic.

While the bulk of the tunes played tonight are culled from last year’s corking Giant Steps LP, the inclusion of older tracks like ‘Lazy Day’ and ‘Lazarus’ demonstrates how the Boo Radleys have evolved from competent-but-unremarkable shoegazers into the master craftsmen they are today.

Yet despite the embarrassment of musical riches, proceedings never reach the orgasmic crescendo that the barnstorming first-half of the show leads you to expect. As vocally gifted as he undoubtedly is, Sice doesn’t exactly ooze charisma and with the rest of the band content to stand back and concentrate on constructing their dense wall-of-sound, there’s not much to feast your retinas on.

It could have been a great gig but in the end we had to settle for a good one. Not a bad complaint, I suppose.

• Stuart Clark