Adrian Nation, Anarchy And Love. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There is no such thing as the sane approach when dealing with the subjects of Anarchy And Love, sometimes you just have ride it out and see where the action takes you, or if you are fortunate you get to join in willingly, hold your head high and smile as the beauty inside both rages.

Both feelings state their case of destruction, both suggest that to follow the noise and conflagration of others is going to end with more than a few stories to tell; to lose your head and your heart at least once in life is to show that you have lived.

It is also the emotion offered by the tremendously talented Adrian Nation, the state of musical confrontation, the war captured and harnessed, the backdrop full of energy and the foreground, that in which the lyrics lay and converse, that is where the dreamers start to believe, they start to dance without impunity or reckless drama. The sense of containment overshadowed and the fierce purity let loose, told to scavenge initially but soon understanding their circumstances and raising rebellion, revolution, anarchy in its beautiful form.

The sound itself is unmistakably that of Adrian Nation, it is a guitar of positivity and soul and yet one that isn’t afraid to step in the darker shades on offer and see the world differently. With the album being immersed in the electric though, something else bleeds through, the memory of Mark Knopfler is to be heard in some quarters; this image is incredibly welcome, a sense of keen appreciation in the perhaps unconscious nod but one that cements the passage between acoustic and electric with endearing quality.

Tracks such as Benderloch Stone, Carpe Meridanus, the unashamed brilliance and fear that resonates in the Dying of Democracy, River in the Rain and album’s title track, Anarchy And Love all find a way to beat the drum of passionate beginnings and praise the target found, for the bull’s eye of respect is there for the taking, the sense of a guitar player merging with a lyricist of absolutes and envious talent.

Anarchy And Love is the harness in which we shackle reason, it toys with the possibilities of what could be if we could master the fire within when we feel overshadowed by the state and the urge to hold someone close; Anarchy is not always a bad thing, love is always a profound statement, put them together and you have a wondrous collection of songs in which to praise.

Ian D. Hall