Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Sometimes you sit upon the shoulders of giants and the view is awe-inspiring, occasionally you get to watch a second generation musician come along and, whilst understanding they have their own belief in giants to contend with, you see the view they offer, from ground level, and it is one that shakes mountains.
Faith in the future at times can be a difficult prospect to grasp, the many variables of existence, especially in uncertain times, is enough to have many live for the moment in a dangerous way, for they don’t embrace the progressive, they just take what they know and dance till dawn in the arms of the past; they believe there is nothing new and so get giddy in the tight, suffocating squeeze of nostalgia.
Faith is in the hands of Pete King and all those others who offer Liverpool the next generation of songs, ones written in the post turn of the 21st Century and who were left with no illusions of what the world was like before, no clear memory of Y2K or of a time without hope.
Hope and faith, the clear tantalising view offered from ground level by Pete King is what drove his set as part of Be Lovely Day in The Brink, the courage to offer a palm and take the listener into the woods to explore the nature and the natural within, a simple guitar the guide but one well versed in matters of the heart and life in the modern age.
Nostalgia can breed uncertainty, it can suggest that nothing will ever beat the memories of the time you value most and yet it can lead the music lover down a path in the woods that only takes them to lonely waters, the hovering spectre of times long since gone; Progressive doesn’t have to mean the 23 minute opus, it just means the willingness to be taken down a less travelled route and see the view in a different clearing and for that Pete King is an excellent guide.
In tracks such as Weightless, Never Hate the Memories, Seasons (a working title due to the giant in the room having an album of the same name) and Someone Like You (I Promise I’m Not A Stalker), Pete King ebbed and flowed like a sea without troubles, no waves of destruction but instead the gentles of spirit that would steer any lonely searcher to their own other Eden.
A vision of the future, no giants required.
Ian D. Hall