Music Review: The Musical Box, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Oct 29 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

The Musical Box, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool _320

THERE are not many  tribute bands who elicit such a devoted following as The Musical Box – and it’s one that is entirely deserved.

Formed in Montreal in 1993, and named after one of the most weird and wonderful songs spawned from the Peter Gabriel period of Genesis, their shows are a tour de force in terms of a meticulous recreation of the original band’s groundbreaking performances from the early ’70s.

They've become a favourite in Liverpool on their transatlantic jaunts after first performing their recreation of Genesis's opus The Lamb Lies Down Broadway in the city a couple of years back. This week they returned to the Phil to pay their final farewell in their current guise and stage that rarest of Genesis performances, the Black Show.

Only a handful of these gigs were performed by the band on their tour of the States and Canada in 1974 promoting the then recently released album Selling England By the Pound.

The stage and instruments were entirely cloaked in black allowing the capering Gabriel in ever-changing costumes to apparently appear and disappear at will.

Just how spectacular these gigs must have been was illustrated in another stunning performance by their 21st century doppelgangers. Denis Gagne – despite sometimes sounding a little rushed and robotic repeating the original frontman’s bizarre song introductions – was otherwise a perfect Gabriel in both sound and vision.

The rest of the band were quite stunning especially during the shimmering instrumental breaks of the Firth of Fifth and Cinema Show when Gagne/Gabriel crept into the wings.

Primed by an astonishingly powerful rendition of the song which gave the band their eponymous title the audience went wild as it all exploded in a magnificent climax of strobe and illumination as the Boxers delivered the knockout with the apocalyptic Supper’s Ready followed by The Knife as encore.

The crowd left in euphoric mood, tempered by a feeling of melancholy that the likes of this may never be seen again.