Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * *
There can be too much polish ground into any album, the smear marks that make a life passionate and interesting, somehow wiped clean, the agony and the ecstasy rinsed out and bleached. Yes by all means make the record as perfect as you can but it should never be sanitised to the point of obliteration and boredom, it should never ever become the point where the world as seen through an artist’s eyes is devoid of colour, dirt or even the flirtation with possible disaster.
The Majestic 12 by Liverpool musician Jon Meadows is an album that is unafraid to register its love of the unpolished but absolutely stirring, it flies the flag for the reason of triumph of sticking to the guns that win you wars and keep you on the straight path of self confidence.
Majestic 12, twelve tracks that resonate with a life that has been lived, songs that the listener will instinctively understand the musician has not embellished a single moment, hasn’t been scrubbed or wiped, been enhanced without rhyme or reason; it is an album that typifies a life without a thousand cameras being trained upon it, the smile is always genuine.
The stand alone single Should Have Been Mine sits comfortably within the realm of songs on offer, classic tracks and new material, the possibility is endless and it is one that Jon Meadows embraces and refuses to even allow a single duster to be with earshot of the music.
You can keep the Magnificent Seven, a more rounded experience of human endeavour awaits the listener as songs such as the anthem like opener of 1234, Contact in the Desert, the superb Got My Teenage Crush, the aforementioned Should Have Been Mine and Sold Her Soul washes over the listener with dedication and cause. The songs may be seen as being unpolished, but that is a truth in which many cannot handle; it is a truth of life that not everything stands up to the intensity of lustre, it is better to show honesty, to feel a part of someone’s story, than to just be spoken down to.
Majestic 12 is an album that speaks to you as an equal partner in the adventure and it is deeply satisfying because of it.
Ian D. Hall