Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The artist sees the blank canvas and does not merely paint the soul experiences; only the home decorator can and should feel unaffected by what appears before them. When it comes to any art form you surely should have been affected by the narration of life around you before committing to the world your own story, not the straight lines of a single brush destined for the skirting board, but the full on light show of a whole series of brush strokes that are keen to spill, to blend, to merge and make the most fascinating Aurora in the canvas sky.
It is to have felt the narration that makes life so special, whether it is the soft stroke of the hair when all is going well and the eventual slap on the back or the utter devastation when life is less than fair, it is narrated, the thoughts linger like butterflies in the wind, they inspire the colours in which the Aurora is envisaged and completed and for Case Garrett and his finely expressed debut album, an Aurora is not just a sight, it is to have lived in the canvas and felt the life paint over you, through you and with you.
The purity of the American Country sound is overwhelming, it doesn’t quite fit with the resonance of today’s outlook, but instead it captures something golden, not the single colours dabbed down and presented with hope, but instead the array of emotions, the depths that a life can descend and the hopes that even at such a fall, can still attain.
This is positive and remarkable exception to the way that Country Music has gone in the last decade, the springboard effect of a genre almost reinventing itself to sit comfortably in the modern theatre of life, yet as songs such as Long Way Down, Going Down To Mobile, the heartbreak intended in She Never Liked Elvis, The Thought of You and Call Me The Breeze play out, what comes across is more natural, painted on with more flair and not with one eye on what the listener might want.
It may be cynical sometimes to look at modern songs as moving away from the genre they inherited but it is also reflective to enjoy an album that is steeped and unashamed to take the canvas back and sit in a state of cool embrace with the particle colours in Case Garrett’s palette.
All embracing, Aurora stands out because the artist is unafraid to look deep into his soul and paint what he sees; there is no finer expression of love for the personal truth than that.
Ian D. Hall