Sheila K. Cameron, A Perfect Landing: Some Love Songs. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To be seen as perfect is not always the ideal, to have A Perfect Landing might be seen as textbook, as rigid and completely by the book as you can get and one that doesn’t allow for any variation in imagination or in the scale of the job at hand. Yet for Sheila K, Cameron A Perfect Landing is a piece of music that the listener cannot but help care for and admire because it offers a different set of values to which the absolute never caters for, that of unblemished hope.

The sub-title of Some Love Songs might be simple enough but it is the hope spread across the 15 tracks in the album which gives its special place in the second of re-issues by the artist and one that carries forth the aspirations of all those who know that time, as long as it held closely, is limitless in its bounty in making music no matter when and where the mood and inspiration may hit home.

It is that force of love that sees Sheila K. Cameron take yet another stride forward as being recognised, quite rightly as a vocalist and lyric writer of distinction; Some Love Songs indeed, a multitude of them, a choir full of devotion that is hard to push away, such is their pleasure, and ones that really frame the point of being irresistible, of charm and to have a weakness for. Love is after always in the eye of the beholder but it is the heart that aches for the perfect landing, the regret of several failed take-offs, the purging feel of mid relationship turbulence and the sweet gratification that comes when the minds of the pilots are in synch, A Perfect Landing is the ultimate cause for celebration and attachment.

Ms. Cameron nails down completely the aspect of the adoration, loss worship and the far off stolen glances during the album and in songs such as You Are Lovely. You’ll Like It At The Waterworks, the exquisite Don’t Hold The Hurt To Make It Easy and Yesterday I Felt Two Inches Tall, love as an expression, as a feeling or even as the desire within us all to hold that one person tightly is marvelled over and given absolute credence.

A very special re-issue by Sheila K. Cameron, A Perfect Landing is more than just about love, it is the very reason we have hope.

Ian D. Hall