Paul Heaton / Cerys Matthews

It's 1995; I'm a passenger in my parent's run down and cheap car, intolerably bored with the whole proceedings, no PSPs back then, no ten CD changers and not even a good stereo. Lying around in the car we have a couple of tapes, none of which I care about, the only thing on my mind being that hard level on Super Mario World I couldn't do.

With a lull of conversation an anonymous tape is thrown in, Beautiful South's 'Carry On Up the Charts'. Now it's 2008, and I can honestly say that that mesmerised and conversationally silent communal listen to this stellar record literally changed my life, and this is exactly why after thirteen years of waiting I was so darned excited to see Paul Heaton strut his magnificent voice right in front of me. It is also the main reason I came out of Hull with such a looming and depressing disappointment.

Now, it's unfair to tie Paul Heaton's entire career to the Beautiful South, he's been there, done that and rightfully doesn't want them to be too much of a comparison. The problem is, they just had so much better songs, although they suffered from the same ailment I saw last night, admitted by the band themselves, musical similarities.



After a fantastic support set from Catatonia's Cerys Matthews (I regret not taking notes) the waiting crowd exploded into football match chanting of "HEATON, HEATON, HEATON!", one of the shouters being Heaton's son, which was met with a hasty reminder from his father that as far as he’s concerned, his name's 'Dad'. There was a very communal feel I have to say, one of the better points of the evening, he joked with the crowd with his trademark wit, although a rather undesirable sound set up left me only hearing airport tannoy muffled voices (the Heaton's son banter was relayed back to me by photographer, Gary). The bassist even had a Hull F.C. shirt on, which of course brought them some favour.

So they opened with second album rocker, 'I Do', which was actually a very promising way to kick it off. His voice is in full form and the song is well constructed and a total head nodder and foot tapper, as anyone who has read any of my other reviews knows is all I can do with my oversized notepad (one would think I'd buy a smaller one, but that detracts from the eccentricity). The first hints of what was to become an actually somewhat tedious evening came across in the next tune, also from his new second album, known as 'The Balcony'. It's got a very Billy Bragg feel to it (certainly his dire latest album, nothing with the thrill and pizzazz of 'Life's A Riot' or 'Brewing Up'), goes no-where and has that overbearing feel of unfortunate filler.



This is the general template for the majority of the setlist, except for one or two numbers, such as 'The Pub', dynamically brilliant with fantastic harmonised vocals. This is arguably the best song of the evening, along with single 'Little Red Rooster' which got a great reaction from the crowd and even dragged the merchandise stand bloke into the room for a sing along. His band put down their instruments for a moment for another highlight of the evening, 'Poems', an emotionally sung acoustic number from Heaton. Great single, 'Mermaids and Slaves' went down like a house on fire, a great pop-rock number that he definitely pulled off live He even threw in a cover of The Spinners' 'Ghetto Child' before the encore, one of the not so great numbers.

To be perfectly honest none of the other tunes from the setlist have anything to talk about. All very bland, all very similar and I'm ashamed to say that I did actually start to yawn and nip out for a fag, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't miss anything, confirmed for me by two fans I had a short chin-wag with. When speaking to these fans and a couple of others they seemed to be in agreement with me, just as upset as I was at such a stellar let down.

I'm serious, it actually hurts to be typing Paul Heaton a bad review after the huge amount of cumulative hours of pleasure his song writing and singing voice have given me. Unfortunately, that's just how the cards landed this evening, with people actually leaving the concert throughout the set, something I'm rather confident I would have done as well, if it wasn't my eGigs duty to remain in full stead. I'm sorry Paul, tried to be impressed by more than a couple of tunes this evening, if only for nostalgia's sake, but it was an impossible task.

FUTURE GIGS