Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In The Clouds, so much goes on that we cannot comprehend fully the way it affects our lives, this once strange realm in which poets pondered and the visionary dreamed, where we believed that giants slept and snored, and in which flights of fancy are the now everyday as millions cross the clouds in search of adventure, home and freedom.
This journey into the stratosphere is beyond the imagination at times, a concentrated effort, of sacrifice and late nights fretting and bargaining with the soul and the ones who witness signs in the high-level Cirrus and the anger in the Cumulonimbus, elated by the prophecy to be found in observing the colour and shape, divination and nephelomancy. Staring up above our field of vision, searching for symbols that bode well in our favour, we might have our head In The Clouds at times but then that is where the realm of greatness resides.
It is a sense of greatness to which Iain Till resides, a head full of wonder, a mind full of wonderfully insightful tunes and lyrics that float across the sky and settle scores with giants, that sees the realm of nephelomancy as one in which to dream, to envisage and produce art.
The four-track E.P. is once again Iain Till at his most productive, his own traces of music deeply engrained and polished, the cirrus which is the dot on the horizon in otherwise perfect blue sky, is not there to cause alarm of bad weather to come, instead it is the moment in which you know a painting of beauty is nothing without the immensity of what lives and circles the planet above us.
Aided with passionate intrigue by Ciaran Cyl, Nolan Watkinson and Greg Chiche, the songs, Daylight, One Fine Day, the live version of Oh, Sweetheart of Mine and the E.P. title track of In The Clouds leaves footprints in the sky in which to follow, in which to see the omens of an audience truly embracing the feel and persuasion of the songs on offer.
A gorgeous return for Iain Till, one that sees the adventure reinvigorated, the pulse quickening and the reminder, if one were ever needed, that to have your head In The Clouds is by far the best way to live, for in that actions dreams can be seen for miles and is unhindered by the road below.
Ian D. Hall