Liverpool Arts: MUSIC REVIEW: Ian Prowse, Philharmonic Hall

Musician Ian Prowse launching a new album The best of Ian Prowse to mark his 21 year career.

LIKE Mischief Night and the Mathew Street Festival, singer-songwriterIan Prowse’s annual Philharmonic shows have become peculiarly Scouse-centric institutions which to the outsider feel like you’re gatecrashing a private but very loud party.

Noted as both a talented tunesmith and legendary carouser in his home town, Prowse’s heart-on-the sleeve music has never quite translated into chart success or recognition beyond the boundaries of Merseyside but that could all be about to change with the release of a new Best Of album.

The potential to showcase his 20-year-old career has clearly rejuvenated Prowse, who takes to the stage in ebullient fashion. Mixing the politics of the heart with a passionate left-wing sensibility, it’s obvious why the Ellesmere Port-born musician names Bruce Springsteen as a hero.

In the blink of an eye Prowse can switch from a sensitive eulogy to Marvin Gaye (Marvellous Marvin) to spitting out an aggressive diatribe against Cameron and Clegg on a great version of The Jam’s Going Underground.

Despite his constant mentions of issues like Hillsborough, the Coalition and his dislike of playing London, it’s when Prowse mines his well of personal experience that he really hits his targets.

Maybe There Is A God After All ruminates on Prowse’s recent fatherhood but, far from being an idealised and soppy celebration of all things baby, it’s an honest appraisal of the event from a man’s point of view.

“It has been like a tour of Vietnam,” he jokes in the song’s introduction but lines like “These are the days/that made a man of me”show his true feelings.

Songs from Prowse’s early-‘90s stint in proto-Britpop band Pele have dated little in the intervening two decades, material such as Raid The Palace and Fat Black Heart welcomed with particular glee by the partisan crowd.

They also serve as a handy signpost to Prowse’s current musical template with the Gaelic-influenced fiddle and folky bouncy showing why Prowse is so admired by the likes of Christy Moore and Elvis Costello.

Prowse finishes with probably his best known song, John Peel favourite Does This Train Stop On Merseyside and there’s a tearful atmosphere as he dedicates the song to both the much-missed DJ and the 96 Hillsborough victims.

Jamie Bowman