Jonas Alaska

I honestly can’t tell whether studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts is at all helpful for an up and coming singer-songwriter. On a positive note, it opens up comparisons to Paul McCartney, one of the academy’s founders who’s been known to give one to one songwriting lessons (Mat Murphy from The Wombats was a notable recipient of one of these), on the downside, it opens up comparisons to Paul CHUFFING McCartney of all people. It takes a hell of a songwriter to live up to them and one hell of a performer to do the same. However, we have an example of both of those in Jonas Alaska, whose brand of sun kissed folk rock is a blissful live experience. Performing live with a band that seems born to play together, this is a performance that is extremely lyrically based, with Alaska’s storytelling skills pushed to the forefront. It’s a difficult kind of live show to pull off and still remain exciting, but Alaska and his band achieve it with style. It may not be the most noisy and visceral rock and roll spectacular on offer but it doesn’t have to be, it’s a celebration of his songs and that’s more than enough to make a show of his totally unmissable.