Tim Bowness w/ Bruce Soord & Jon Sykes – Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room: Live Review

By Mike Ainscoe on 25th May 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

Tim Bowness, Bruce Soord – Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room – 24th May 2026

BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS

The Burning Shed 25th birthday bash(es) kicks off its series of four gigs – or parties – in Liverpool. And wow. It’s four years since we last caught up with Tim Bowness live just around the corner at the excellent Prohibition Studios. 2025 has been a kind of fallow after 2024’s truly solo Powder Dry, plus some occasional no-man activity. 2026 is the year of plenty (including some Plenty) where the pipeline might well release some sort of flood, or at the barest minimum, some steady trickle.

TIM B & THE BUTTERFLY MIND MEN

The plan is a set of solo and no-man songs with the Butterfly Mind, featuring Matt Stevens on mainly seated guitar, John Jowitt on bass, Andy Edwards on drums and laconic humour and Rob Groucutt on keys and occasional guitar. A set too that from a personal perspective, could not have been handpicked better. Wherever There Is Light, Rainmark, Things Change, Sing To Me – all choices that would be in a ten track ‘best of Bowness’ mixtape, only missing the favourite “you lost the plot before the plot was hatched” line in Stupid Things That Mean The World. However, there are several moments when some choice lyrics are delivered deliciously that more than make up.

It’s what Tim tells the social media later, is a night of contrasts. From constant ‘sadness ratings’ – Tim is hovering around 8.5 and Matt scoring quite high with a “mum in hospital” 8 – to almost cathartic outpourings and typically lush and breathy Bowness, the moments of lightness and of comfort are to be savoured. As he stalks the stage with a genuinely menacing gait as the band take TimeTravel In Texas and All The Blue Changes by the scruff of the neck, it strikes that over the years, we’ve never seen Tim perform as aggressively and with so much belligerence, it feels quite a shock. He’s clearly on the offensive.

MORE CONTRASTS

A glimpse at the setlists onstage show one possible encore option as ‘Time Travel (vicious)’ – although on the evidence of the opening ten minutes, it might seem redundant. There’s a similar drive behind The Warm Up Man Forever, with Andy Edwards pummelling the tribal beat and the Jowitt bass getting a similar treatment. And then there’s the way Tim basks in the “under the radar spitting blood” line that’s delivered with a genuine relish. So much so that the repeated phrase becomes increasingly savoured. Not even Morrissey could match the acrimony.

And then there’s Wherever There Is Light (with Rob Groucutt picking up second guitar) and Sing To Me – the absent slide in the former replaced by a gorgeous arpeggio from Matt – packed with more standard Bowness tropes. The mention of Sing To Me gets some enthusiastic yelps – “more owl than enthusiasm” and there’s another crafted solo from Matt who’s turning in a man of the match performance with his seated shape throwing and grimacing. Not for the first time this evening, he’s into things enough to stand up in a ‘take up thy bed and walk’ kind of miracle. He does the same for Rainmark as he nails another lead break amidst the zombie apocalypse scenario that belies the beauty of such a moving piece.

TEN ON THE SCALE

The “plunge into a ten out out ten on the scale” heralds the finale as Mixtaped, sees the Butterfly Mind band becomes the Car Crash band (in the style of Hawkind or one of those psychedelic German bands) in the chaos that ensues as all hell breaks loose. The Les Paul is seriously abused as the two guitarists shred out and Tim is making the most of the “you’d kill for that feeling…again” line before standing clear as the end of Things Change is only missing a Keith Moon style drum destruction. Contrast indeed, but a terrific set and a band assembled by their leader who aren’t afraid to push the boundaries. Another ten on ‘the scale’.

BRUCE & JON – Liverpool DEBUT

With The Pineapple Thief on a brief pause after the It Leads To This album sessions and the Last To Run EP, Bruce Soord doesn’t stand still and opens the evening’s proceedings accompanied by buddy Jon Sykes. Unusual to see the latter without a set of headphones as is his wont, but he discreetly inserts some earplugs an off we go. An hour set with the new album Ghosts In The Park being the tip of the Soord iceberg, as we revisit the solo catalogue with a dip into TPT for good measure.

With a few guitars and some percussion options, Bruce offers a PSA: “We have a loop pedal so everything could go wrong!” Possibly in anticipation of what’s to come with Tim, there’s an air of melancholy about his selection. The solitary path of a convicted man could be the theme of the evening as well as the second song of the set. Parental mortality is a strong presence, in particular the (although not a particularly avid description) lovely Meet Me On The Downs that’s a personal highlight of the new record. Described as a song of two halves, the ‘album version’ lushness of the second half given an echoing ring of acoustic guitar.

FOR A MOMENT LET’S FORGET

The new songs, world premieres no less, being worthy partners to the selection from the All This Will Be Yours album., while never Ending Light sees the rehearsals pay off as the arrangement earn the fullness of the looping station as give Bruce the chance to switch to electric guitar. All This Will be Yours itself gets a hypnotic drum pattern and looped finger picking that provide the pallette on which Bruce lets loose with some shattering bottle neck and searing guitar. Cut With Flowers sees the groove intensify as the musical mood takes a darker turn, matching the starkness and sobriety of the album version.

The finale sees what might be termed crowdpleasers, the The Pineapple Thief archive mined for some deep-ish cuts. A Loneliness is given a rare (not deliberate) five string guitar treatment, but the title track from Ghosts In The Park sees the acoustic arrangement adding to the emotional impact as the duo master the tricky intricacy. The constant presence of higher register support vocals from Jon adding an extra dimension to a set of musical subtlety and songwriting craft that might sit on the fringes of the Prog spectrum but is certainly deserving of a wider acclaim.