SNOOZECONTROL
Lotto Arena, Antwerp (original in Flemish)
“When we entered the hall, we became silent and just stopped to look and enjoy so much simple beauty that enraptured us. If in an overcrowded Lotto Arena you can make an audience that clearly only comes for the headliner can eat out of your hand without any effort? And brings in deep emotion? Then you have to be cut out of the very good wood. And that is an artist like Charlie Austen, who has also won her traces as a member of Lux Lisbon, certainly and surely. For that reason, Charlie Austen seems an artist to keep an eye on the future. A future that, on the basis of that sparkling performance in Lotto Arena alone, looks more rosy”
Epstein Theatre
"In a short but compelling set, Charlie Austen opened up to the audience with no pressure baring across her shoulders. In songs such as Middle Ground, Little Universe, Blame, Traces of You, Copenhagen, Slave To Chemistry and Wonder With Me saw musings on love, rejection, heartache and death dealt with purpose and poise, the nakedness of feelings becoming a mirror in which we should all seek solace, which we could all look into and find that one common bond, hope. A marvellously presented set, Charlie Austen joins the ranks of musicians who have been taken to the hearts of the Liverpool music lovers"
Album review
"The songwriting is confident, with almost spoken word sections and a strong world-weary edge ... It also bursts with humour, and pathos and longing... This is someone who’s not just repeating the words but is living them in her imagination as she sings them and is using her technical mastery of vocal phrasing to give them full meaning... The rest of the album is sparklingly original. Some of the songs seem so personal, so confessional, that I shudder to think what might have inspired them... The CD ends with a thing of tiny, wonderful, beauty, the endlessly romantic Wonder With Me"