Bill Ryder-Jones at Gullivers in Manchester review

Image: Bill Ryder-Jones 

Bill welcomes his accompanying band back onto stage, he starts to play the opening riff to 'This Charming Man', the audience's eyes fixate on him in wide-eyed anticipation. He suddenly halts and laughs, pauses for a few seconds and grinds out the opening chords to Stone Roses 'Waterfall', sure enough they fall for it again. 

It's this humour woven through the set that keeps the audience piqued for the entirety, a feat not so easy when you're playing through an entire new album, Bill's newly released West Kirby County Primary. 

Gulliver's upstairs ballroom is packed to the rafters, a relatively intimate setting that houses no more than a couple of hundred people.

Bill largely appreciative of this, calls out, "If you've paid for a ticket get to the front, if you're on the guest list move back. Apart from my girlfriend, she can come to the front". Of course someone shouts, "You haven't got a girlfriend." 

There's two parts to Bill's set on the night, he fuses the breezy melodies of album favourites like 'Catherine Huskinsson' (above) and 'Two To Birkenhead' for one part with his youthful looking band, and strikes more intimate and introspective moments mid-way through the set with a flurry of lone renditions of songs like the cheekily written 'Tell Me You Don't Love Watching'.

When paving the way for his band to exit the stage at the mid-point, Bill speaks up in his softly spoken Merseyside accent, "I'm gonna do a couple on my own, unless they [his band] want the experience?" he looks around at each of them and pauses, "No?".  

"This is usually the part when people start going to the bar, but Big John's at the back. You see Big John? You'll have to get past him". With the factor of Big John forming a one man blockade and the prospect of Bill's more immersive and hushed moments no one does leave for the bar, the room remains drawn to him. 

He's most notably a down to earth guy, if the songs don't tell you that then his baggy checked shirt and curly hair that repeatedly impedes his vision for the most part of his set does. There's no rock star façades with Bill, his band are equally grounded and tuned to the music. 

It's noticeable that the emotions relayed by Bill is the nucleus to which the band rotates; sombre juncture's like 'Daniel', a song dedicated Bill's late brother, sees all four play rather rigidly while Bills croons the lyrics of loss and struggle with his eyes closed.

On the other hand 'Wild Roses' is crafted with much more vigour and pulls in the biggest applause of the night. Set closer 'Satellites' is by far the most emphatic and animated, a song that embodies the balance of the set that sea-saws between melodic landscapes and minimal intimacy. 

It's the perfect set closer, the song enjoyed most by the band as they lean in to their instruments and articulate the songs sprawling instrumental that howls and crashes to a triumphant end.

'West Kirby Count Primary' is an impassioned journey in itself, but one made a whole lot more satisfying when undertaken with Bill himself. 

Read our interview with Bill Ryder-Jones 'Liverpool is a hell of a lot more progressive'