REVIEW: Paul Carrack

Among his 10 tours in the last 11 years, lighting and backdrop visual or filmed effects have more recently added to the experience.

Soloists' close-ups always excite and nostalgically rewarding this time was his past video of Another Cup Of Coffee with Mike and The Mechanics, running in perfect sync with the live performance going on in front.

A relaxed first set to include new material from the newest album, I Know That Name, as well as two items written for the Eagles (I Don't Want To Hear It Any More and Love Will Keep Us Alive) brought Eyes of Blue and Satisfy My Soul that lacked the incisiveness of previous years.

Perhaps that is inevitable but once fine saxophonist Steve Beighton's first solo had arrived '” withheld until Better Than Nothing, the eighth number '”the amperage increased.

This arrangement included a jazzy Carrack piano solo, taken up by new trumpeter Ed Collins, and Carrack after a second key change, then moved on to Hammond organ.

Nothing More Than A Memory's closing guitar solo led into the threatening Can You Hear Me Running.

Here searchlights created the most intense part of the show and, next, backdropped church windows during The Living Years homed in on one of the multiple emotions stirred by this great song.

It's an eight-piece band this year, the men in streetwise black suits, white shirts and loosened slim ties, and Lindsay Dracass in a short, black, frothy and layered, strapless prom frock.

She and Paul Copley still get their solo spots.

Her voice is important, especially now, where a bigger band creates a thicker sound that dulls the edges of songs that score emotionally with fewer players.

This tour had pre-curtain drama.

Long-serving guitarist John Robinson was replaced last-minute by Chris Garfield, whose debut, without rehearsal, was in Holland supporting the Eagles themselves.

He was probably on familiar Worthing territory, being once with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.

Great to see so-solid bassist Jeremy Meek still engrossed and moving about like a late-spring chicken.

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