Charlotte Hatherley
Masque, Liverpool
17/11/2009

Charlotte Hatherley has had an active year. She was a touring guitarist for Bat For Lashes in March and she’s recorded and released ‘New Worlds’, her best solo album to date. Tonight, that hectic feeling is well and truly evident as she darts all over the room, always looking like there’s something very important to do.

Whatever she is doing, it’s clearly nothing to do with getting the sound levels right. As she comes on stage, something is amiss with the stage monitors and she takes a five-minute break as it gets sorted. We’re not implying that it’s any of Hatherley’s fault, of course, but a short while later, she’s back, and so is the sound problem. She continues the gig anyway, to her credit, but her voice is so very faint that it’s like listening with cotton buds stuffed into your ears. She’s quite clearly annoyed, but not deterred from playing a wide selection from her three solo albums.

There are, however, many delights to take away from tonight. As mentioned before, Hatherley’s new album is a brilliant slice of left-field weirdness; it’s clear that she was more into the technical aspect of song crafting when she was in Ash, which is in abundance in ‘Full Circle’, ‘Behave’ and ‘Alexander’ that she plays tonight. The latter, her most recent single, is an XTC-esque radio slayer with a fantastic chorus. She ends her hour long set slightly earlier than she would have hoped, in what she calls a “compromised” set, but no concession was made on her part.

Mike Doherty