Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
When they don’t let you take advantage of your first chance, the second stab at showing the world your words not only has to be taken, it has grabbed, slung over the shoulder and held so tightly that nobody can ever wrestle it of you. It requires love, attention and the spite to spit in the faces of all the detractors and those that dare raise their eyebrows in mock derision and painful excuses; wherever the Rain may fall, is not usually the sign of a flood but of the green and well thought of lawn, of the return of one of Liverpool’s much admired bands.
Rain return, some might argue they have never been away, especially in their Liverpool homeland where their name is whispered with ease when people talk of groups who should have been bigger than they were allowed to be. Rain are back, the back streets and alleyways of the Mersey metropolis no longer have to hold back conversations in awe and the hushed tones, for in Ten Belters & A Slow One, Rain is the answer all the neglected and left behind by the words of the self-appointed and opinionated relish in, it is in this resurrection that hope pervades above anything else and the album is true to its words, it is full of belters.
Ten Belters & A Slow One is full of electricity, of vibe and that one point in life in which the listener and the musician can agree with, desire to prove so many people wrong, to stick more than a couple of fingers up to anyone who says such things cannot be done. Resurrection, the power to come back and beat into submission the music, to make it work for you is the point and in songs such as Coco Tokyo, Girl, You’ve Been On My Mind, the subtle anger of Two Faced and Lucifer’s Son and the harrowing realisation of middle age memories and loss that stalks Somebody’s Hero that power is stitched with a fine needle throughout each moment that the band offer.
A tremendous return for a band that many thought, feared, might never appear again; second chances have to be seized with glee and Rain have done that with style.
Ian D. Hall