MATT GOSS BRINGS HIS ‘ITS AND MORE TOUR’ TO YORK’S BABRICAN CENTRE

★★★★☆ (4/5)

**MATT GOSS PERFORMING AT YORK’S BARBICAN CENTRE**
**PHOTOCREDIT: JOHN HAYHURST**

To open this review, I have a confession to make. I have not been less excited about gig in years in the run up to seeing Matt Goss. But I felt it would be rude to turn down an opportunity to see someone who I have not seen before. My level of enthusiasm was not enhanced much by the support act, which strangely, was a comedian. It was visually impaired Geordie comic Jake Donaldson. To be fair, some of his stuff was quite funny, I just felt it was an odd choice to open for a musician.

When Matt Goss’ band took to the stage my expectations did start to increase, they were tight and sounded like they meant business. Sadly, it wasn’t a huge crowd for a venue of this size, but a vast phalanx of women of a certain age rushed to the front of the stage as soon as Matt stepped onto it. They were passionate, electrifyingly enthusiastic, thrilled, highly charged and stayed in that position for the whole show. I suspect that many of them were Brosettes back in the late ‘80s. I honestly expected knickers to be thrown on stage, but I don’t believe that they were!

Goss opened his set with a great arrangement of Bros’ only UK number one “I Owe You Nothing”, it was a much more sultry and soft funk arrangement than the original and worked well to set the tone of the gig. Obviously, those hard core fans lapped it up, at this point I thought that this might well be a great night, even for me. The band followed this with a great run through of Stevie Wonder’s massive 1976 hit “I Wish”. Not many people can cover a great Stevie song and pull it off, but Matt Goss did it with aplomb and confidence.

The set featured a few covers, all of which showcased Goss’ talent as a great singer and the immense passion and power of his band, who seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Those covers included Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” which was very clearly a favourite with the crowd. Pretty much everyone was on their feet and dancing at that point, even me! Although I am sure I wasn’t the greatest dancer on the night. Later in the set we were given somemedley style run throughs of Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman”, Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and the classic “Hard To Handle”. But perhaps the prize for cover of the night goes to a funky and stylish version of the Oasis song “Champagne Supernova”. Matt introduced it by saying that he and the band had worked it into a soul song. They had and it was so much better than the original. As well as buckets of soul there was gallons of gospel and a barrel full of funk.

Goss is a great raconteur between songs, airing stories of life, both his ups and downs and general observations, particularly when speaking about his solo material and some his former band’s songs. “Drop The Boy” and “Are You Mine” were particularly good, even more so considering that Matt wrote them as a teenager. The latter is one of his favourites. He played a new song, “Disco Mona Lisa”, which will be included on his forthcoming album. It has everything the perfect disco song needs; hooks, beats and style. I can imagine Goss doing a live duet with Sophie Ellis Bextor on this one. The emotion was almost palpable on “We Are Not Broken” and “The Beautiful Unknown”. That second one became my favourite Matt Goss song, and I have played it a few times since the gig. I had completely forgotten Matt Goss being featured on Paul Oakenfold’s “Firefly” back in 2010. But clearly no one else had. This was and is a full-on dance banger and the band smashed it out of the park.

I guess that some of my earlier lack of excitement was down to me, in my hopefully diminishing music snobbery where I considered Bros a boy band. But really, they were just three music obsessed lads that met at school and had the talent to make it big. A bit like Wham!, also not a boy band. Matt Goss has had some extreme ups and downs in his life, and he has come out of the other side as a well rounded and clearly abundantly gifted singer and musician. Despite my initial reluctance and negativity, I bloody loved this scorching set which closed with a spectacular party style romp through “When Will I Be Famous”. That song capped a faultless performance from Matt Goss and his band. I was never a big Bros fan, but I am now a Matt Goss fan!