Paul Wilkes, River Running With Me. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is an almost inalienable fact that for the people that make up the islands and lands of Great Britain, water, whether in the form of the crashing sea that dominates the paintings of Turner, the gentleness of the stream babbling through country fields and pulling at the stems of flowers in full bloom or the mightiest rivers that cities stride alongside, the Mersey, the Thames, the Rae, the Clyde, the Taff or the Tyne, all are constant and as Paul Wilkes more than beautifully shows on his latest E.P., there is a River Running With Me.

Paul Wilkes seemingly easily crafts with a deftness of touch, the thought of the water in all its forms as an unseen metaphor and symbol of human frailty and fragility whilst having the great knack of disguising the four songs that make up the E.P. as melancholic gems that glide against the emotional responses as if allowing the gentle lapping of foam from the water’s edge pull you down to a place in which happiness is part of the bigger picture.

River Running With Me is an emotional rollercoaster, a white water ride in which the juxtaposition of life, comfortable, unafraid, determined, sits just as easily in the same pool of inspired deliberation as melancholy, unfounded concerns and unfulfilled desires and hopes. It is a set of songs that burn into the soul and makes you glad to have heard them.

Alongside the title track, the songs Alive With You, with its beautiful haunting resonance, the enjoyable Bluebird and the almost whispered damnation that accompanies Last Wish, Paul Wilkes has pulled together songs that suggest consistency, that flow like the tide going downstream, full of opportunity and the awaiting nature of the yet undiscovered.

Who has never sat by the river bank and wondered where the ripples would carry you off too? Who hasn’t wanted to follow a stream to its meeting with the river and the oceans, River Running With Me offers a glimpse of that world and with some sort of overwhelming majesty, should be seized upon.

Ian D. Hall