Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It is never about the production but the passion and depth of strength and fortitude behind it that makes it a piece of art of repute. The intensity that is placed into delivering what is effectively your soul in the open air, to bring the birth of your voice in the natural arena of scrutiny and possible derision, that is what makes the process all the more worthwhile.
For Canterbury based Alison Green, the opening up of the soul is more audible than most, it positively resounds in spades as her album Whiskey Ginger Johnson plays with the gentleness of the human psyche and the darkness that is held within words, actions and meaning. Alison Green mixes the idea of the 21st Century pastoral, the charm of the singular story and the destructive power that holds the feminine attraction in its wake together as spinning a golden thread into a bar worth holding dear.
The downbeat charisma, the sense of beguilement that takes place in each song is that of a siren luring the helpless but honour bound, not to a rocky shore line where their hopes are dashed, splintered and destroyed, but safely to a point where the safe harbour lays, the deepness of the siren’s lyrics offering safe passage through the problematic waters that life throws with uncaring solitude.
Whiskey Ginger Johnson is an album rammed with songs, there is almost no room to spare on the recording for the moment to breathe, however, breathe you must, it must be cool, calm and collected, it has to listened to with measured composure and unruffled sentiment, for the album is about the psyche as much as it is of getting to hear some truly impressive songs. Tracks such as Take Me Home, Oh My God, the pleasure of Unscripted Arthouse Play, the excellence of both Herbert Finnegan and Ghost Boy and the subtlety of Heart Tattoo give Alison Green the one thing that money cannot buy, respect.
The tale of Alison Green, Chaucer’s unwritten work, is nowhere near completion, there are many, many chapters yet to be scribed, Whiskey Ginger Johnson on the other hand is an album of infinite possibilities bound together by a true Canterbury great.
Alison Green returns to Liverpool as part of this year’s I.P.O. at the Cavern from May 12th.
Ian D. Hall