Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Arguably Cornwall is a county that is only attached to England by two miles of land, a shared sense of love for the seas that surround the British Isles and the high water mark of the River Tamar. The people are proud of their heritage as being seen as part of a Celtic tribe and for many the county has for too long been asleep, like some land expanse dressed in the finery of the princess Sleeping Beauty, only now really starting to have its voice heard as national debate inscribes itself deep in the heart of memory and long forgotten secrets.
Like all the counties of the U.K. who lost great swathes of men during World War One, Cornwall was left to mourn many who worked the land and gave definition to the land of the Cornish, their names forgotten, their lives but a race memory hopefully passed down through their descendents, their secret lives and the secret gardens they left behind as they marched off to war, remaining uncovered and left to grow wild.
Names On A Wall, it perhaps is all we can hope for in the end, that glory in a worthwhile pursuit is tempered by another man’s quarrel. It is those names that are remembered with poignancy and spirit in the release of Names On A Wall, written and recorded by The Changing Room’s Tanya Brittain and Sam Kelly and in conjunction with The Lost Gardens of Heligan to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of The Battle of the Somme.
The Lost Gardens of Heligan, now thankfully recognised by the Imperial War Museum as a Living Memorial, is the backdrop to the three songs and wonderfully one reprisal sang in Cornish, the men who tended the gardens on the estate and then one day left the garden to be forgotten as they too marched into history’s dark embrace.
Like some latter day Sleeping Beauty who was waiting for the right person to bring her to life, the surge in the interest in the county can only be for the good and in the three songs voiced in English, Names On A Wall, We Will Remember Them and He Died With His Boots On, both Sam Kelly and Tanya Brittain have done both the men of Heligan and the men on both sides of the war justice and integrity.
We are all much more than Names On A Wall, we all have secrets that bury, we are all waiting to be re-discovered by someone. The Changing Room have made that clear.
The joint venture between The Changing Room and The Lost Garden of Heligan’s Names On A Wall is released on November 11th.
Ian D. Hall