Newbury’s storming finale to New York rocker’s UK tour

Sari Schorr with support Matt Pearce and the Mutiny

at Arlington Arts, Snelsmore

on Sunday, April 28

Review by BRIAN HARRINGTON

MATT Pearce is a founder member of the highly successful Voodoo Six. This project is a six-piece blues/rock outfit in which the inclusion of keyboards, a female backing/co-lead vocalist and saxophone adds scope to explore crossovers with funk and soul influences.

Tonight’s set opened with Got A Thing Going On from their 2022 album The Soul Food Store. Sadly their sound was at times rather muddy, making lyrics hard to distinguish. They finished with a powerful rendition of Oh Well (Part 1) the Fleetwood Mac classic.

This was the final night of Sari Schorr’s tour with Matt and her joy at being live on stage was self-evident, she loves performing and told the sold-out audience that Newbury is special to her, and was always planned to mark the final destination of the tour because her 2023 album with guitar maestro Robin Trower was recorded in Newbury. (Studio 91 on Greenham Business Park to be precise).

She opened with three tracks from that album, Joyful Sky, The Circle Is Complete, The Distance and the title track, before heading back to 2016 for Ain’t Got No Money, a song she wrote while living in Paris.

Sari’s vocals are, in my opinion, up there with the best, gritty soulful and with a phenomenal range, she has the ability to convey the emotion of her lyrics, not just with her vocals but with her movements. She is the epitome of a born performer.

There were more highlights tonight than I could count; Ordinary Life was in no way ordinary due to some creative instrumentation which saw Chris Cliff on bass take lead using the bass to provide the main melody along with Lee Morris (of Magnum fame) on percussion.

It would be wrong not to mention the contribution of Ash Wilson on lead guitar. His riffs and solos were spectacular.

Sari ended her set with her soulful cover of Black Betty before returning for a storming encore of I Just Want To Make Love To You (Willie Dixon) and, finally a blistering cover of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll.

A truly great gig.