Kate Tempest @ The Kazimier, Liverpool, 18 February

“It’s rammo in the main room,” Mike Skinner once said, which The Kazimier definitely is; he also said that he was backing Kate Tempest to win the Mercury. She did not, but she commands the stage like a winner. From the second she walks out until several minutes after she's left, the London native has everyone in attendance transfixed. Those who came for a gig instead experienced one of those defining moments where you realise you’ll never be lucky enough to witness this for the first time ever again.

Over the next hour or so, the 29-year-old draws upon material from debut album Everybody Down; there is poetry, and even a few excerpts from her unmistakeable epic, Brand New Ancients. When it comes to words, tonight none of them are wasted in idle conversation. She mentions how “We’re in a state of national fucking emergency” and that community is needed – which is fitting, as rarely does a room full of strangers feel this together.

The choice to bring in material of different formats could run the risk of the show feeling off-kilter and without purpose, but Tempest's set is balanced and paced sublimely. The energy and white-hot wit of album tracks like Lonely Daze and Circles, backed by her strikingly noisy live band and paired with the power and delivery of her speeches, means there's no time to catch your breath.

There are moments when she questions herself, as though she is fighting with self-doubt, but as far as this absorbed, encapsulated audience are concerned, Kate Tempest is an inarguable figurehead for how powerful music can be – even if she doesn’t know it herself. [Matthew Cooper]