Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We look to America to provide a solid warmth when it comes to music, a sense of genre that for all the greatness the British possess when it comes to music writing and undoubtedly the home of pop music, Folk and the spiritual home of Heavy Metal, we just cannot truly get to grips with Americana or the Country ballad, some bands capture it but as a whole the difference between the two musical empires of the past comes down to the structure and lay out of the country itself.
The shadow of the English pastoral and the Gaelic rural does not evoke the same sense of grand open sky available to the American songwriter, the large mountain ranges that dominate either coast and have a sense of history that dwarfs arguably our own spectacular scenery. You have to be pretty special to even contemplate pulling off a song or an album with a strong British accent that would compete for the attention of the Americana fan on both sides of the roaring and often dangerous ocean.
To be special isn’t filled with the mine field of arrogance, to be special is to understand humility and be at times extraordinarily humble, to feel the passion of the Silhouettes and make it smile in a way that a profile can, the offering to a genre in which this side of the Atlantic has had the pleasure of witnessing more times than not thanks to the power of the American film industry, the novels and the poetry of some of the greats of the 19th and 20th Century.
Influence is everything but it is where that influence resonates is where the key to unlocking another door of the mind lays, to be more than you are, to perhaps collaborate further than you have gone before and for John Jenkins, a musician of Liverpool who has gone beyond the call of safety many times, the Silhouettes is where the imagination and the influence meet with outstanding results.
A track which will eventually join the soon to be released Window Shopping in Nashville, Silhouette is the ballad that many on that side of the ocean will drool over and in which will open many a set of eyes here.
The duet in which love of the genre and the spirit is evident and one in which Megan-Louise’s voice is amply personified, it is the call between two nations but with a shared heritage, between two people asking for understanding and with Jon Lawton, Scott Poley, Chris Howard, Scott Whitley, Justin Johnson, Camilla Sky and Vanessa Murray all joining in the declaration of heartfelt intent and upbeat message, Silhouettes is a gracious, and alluring song, one that demonstrates perfectly how superb Mr. Jenkins is as a songwriter.
Ian D. Hall