Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is always time for the harmony and the beauty of lyrical aspiration to join forces in this world, when they do there is a certain potency of achievement that comes through in any piece of art that is laid bare for the audience to hear, see and immerse themselves into.
When that art is delivered in a way that makes the listener’s heart beat to a different time, to a period when such things were perhaps more keenly accepted, an era to which the softness of a voice carried more weight than the screaming satisfaction of the loud and the bumbling inconsequential, then the heart is able to rejoice. It rejoices not because art has shown the reality to the listener, it swoons with love because the fib is exposed, the untruth of such beauty is realised and the song becomes so much sweeter for the benefit.
In Geoghegan Jackson’s five strong song E.P. Parlour in the Sun, the measure of beauty is only surpassed by the strength of will that makes the songs soar with the flavour of the 1970s, of the likes of laid bare early Heart but with the attitude that illusion is no substitute for the real thing, of truth and hardship in which romance often flies.
The Parlour in the Sun is a place where the tranquil can feel at peace with the world but it is also a location to which may be shrouded in shadow most days and it takes courage and hope to put the body out there day in and day out in the hope of catching that exotic moment of bliss, for where the body craves sunlight, the heart craves love and that too at times is covered in a damp unseeing fog.
Geoghegan Jackson understand this and through the songs Threads, Cool Morning, Fossil Friend, Catch A Train and the E.P. title track, this 2011 recording stands out as holding the truth within harmonious hands and revealing with sweet beautiful tones the deceit that can be built up with romantic insinuation and blind love.
Parlour in the Sun is an E.P. of great enjoyment, one that soars as it seeks to educate, stirring in its beauty and completely moving, a genuine thrill of musical awareness.
Ian D. Hall