Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Unlike say New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles or Boston, you have got to have spent time in Pittsburgh to fully understand and appreciate its magnetic charm, both as a city and its history and for the culture that has developed out of the bars, theatres and dreams of the people who make the Steel City what it is. The other famous cities that litter the thoughts of those dreaming of seeing America with their own eyes are all visible in the daydreams of those willing to stretch their legs and their minds, Pittsburgh though has to be seen physically to be appreciated and appreciated it would be.
It is the home to the Penguins, the Steelers, the incline and great hospitality; it is also the abode of the fantastic band Steelesque and their lyricist Rob Eldridge. Taking a slight momentary deviation from the world of Steelesque, Mr Eldridge finally has had the time to release his own album titled Room Full of Gardens and it is a very good piece of recording history in which to imagine visiting or even revisiting the city in which Mario Lemeux made his name, pulling up a stool at a bar and listening with quiet content to the stories of a city just as important to the history of the United States but which doesn’t get the same adoration as it relatively close near neighbours.
Room Full of Gardens sees Rob Eldridge slip quite comfortably into solo territory for a while. He raises the flag of independence whilst nourishing the fellow musicians taking part on the album, notably Steven Foxbury and Joseph Piacquadio, and giving a very good account of his time and life in tracks such as Reign of Reign, the underlying bitterness that is perhaps heavily disguised in Life’s Commercial, the undisguised joy in music arrangement in A Man With Three Names and the superb Feed The Wolf which cries as angrily as its name suggests but whom shares the nobility of the creature that stalks the Appalachian Mountains barking at humanity to keep back from its own half beaten terrain.
Whilst it may be a bit hard to imagine Rob Eldridge without Steelesque throwing a comforting arm around the shoulders, what Rob manages to do in the space of this album is too encourage those in the Pittsburgh area to take note, to show that Pittsburgh is a place that no longer resides in a dirty smog in the back of the minds of people in New York or Washington, or perhaps even in the gentrified thoughts of those in Philadelphia or Media, it is a place where music can grow and be seen growing.
Room Full of Gardens is released on July 1st.
Ian D. Hall