Gig review: Mike and The Mechanics

FOR anyone with an interest in middle-of-the-road 80s pop balladry, this revival tour by ex-Genesis man Mike Rutherford and his rearranged band of Mechanics will have been unmissable. In the absence of Paul Carrack and the late Paul Young, Andrew Roachford and Tim Howar had been drafted in to lend two very different vocal styles to Rutherford's back catalogue.

Most members of the modest Playhouse audience would probably have been in the right demographic to get a Top Gear reference, so it seems appropriate to compare Howar to Richard Hammond and Rutherford to James May. The former, wearing a ripped-collar T-shirt, medallions and feather-cut hair, hammered his foot on the monitor, yelled "make some noise" and positively bellowed his way through songs like Genesis's Follow You Follow Me and I Can't Dance. Rutherford, meanwhile, a genial, professorial type with grey hair and glasses, seemed content to stand aside and let him get on with it.

Fortunately, Roachford is not Jeremy Clarkson. He has a truly classy voice that modulated between soulful tenderness and raucous blues power. It's little wonder that his own songs Only to Be With You and Cuddly Toy were among the highlights of the set, although even he couldn't inject much life into such bland efforts as Another Cup of Coffee, Over My Shoulder or The Living Years. Only within the final few songs did anything like real passion emerge, a combination of Roachford's skill and Howar's frantic willingness to work the crowd during All I Need is a Miracle and the grandstanding finale Word of Mouth.