Lou Hickey

Lou Hickey sounds like a female Nick Cave, creating sepia-toned vignettes of restless lives. The Glasgow singer/ songwriter is at one moment touchingly sad and broken, the next ballsy and angry. Think of a grown up Lilly Allen. A Lie is a laid-back and jazzy torch song, while the piano led Does It Get Easier? is a superb break-up song mixing smoky jazz with rock rhythms and wail of a violin. It also boasts the lyrics “I can watch the dust settle on our love”. Now that’s poetry. - The Daily Record

s befitting a gig held just before Christmas, there was tinsel and glitter decorating the King Tuts stage for Lou Hickey’s performance.

Sporting a suitably festive dress, Ms Hickey herself certainly appeared in a jolly mood, and the gig itself provided some merry moments.

Headlining Tuts as a solo act for the first time is unlikely to have been the way the bubbly Glasgow singer imagined finishing the year, after starting it with Codeine Velvet Club, but the bulk of this gig was about the future, save a version of her old band’s Vanity Kills in the encore.

There’s still a retro-soul element pulsing underneath her work, but it’s far more jazzy, and willing to let its hair down than the more suave offerings served up in her collaboration with Jon Fratelli.

She managed to squeeze a seven-piece backing band onstage, but this proved a mixed blessing, as the overall sound was sometimes a tad cloudy and muddled.

The crowded stage set-up also prevented Hickey from trying out any moves from her burlesque background, but she was still a bright, lively vocal presence, and her best songs followed in that sashaying vein, with Another Letdown a raucous toe-tapper, before the stripped-back New Shoes dove-tailed nicely into a sweet version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

However, her closing run of numbers truly rocked, rolled and flowed, with enough sass to get the majority of the crowd moving their feet and leaving full of good-natured festive spirit.
- The Herald

Thankfully, the abrupt demise of Codeine Velvet Club hasn't left Lou Hickey twiddling her thumbs. Re-focussing on her jazzy chanteuse solo career, she put in a support appearancehere that was bright indeed - and, even in a set condensed due to the gig over-running, her sashaying pop had enough oomph behind it to provoke a strong reaction.
While her glamorous image is surely a boost, it shouldn't obscure the fact she's also got a fine set of pipes on her, as evidenced on the torch ballad Starlight, which nicely contrasted with the catchy, finger-clicking and toe tapping tracks that made up the bulk of her set. She briefly mentioned her former band too, but there was enough evidence to suggest she'll do fine on her own.
- The Herald

A proper pin-up in the making in Lou Hickey, festooned tonight in actual pearls and metaphorical evening gloves. - The Fly