Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
It is unusual for a re-master of an album to add anything more to a listeners overall enjoyment than when they first purchased the original recording. It is extraordinary to feel more than moved by the new recording, so moved that the lyrics seem and get underneath the skin to the point where you question what you didn’t hear all those years ago. Ian McNabb’s re-mastering of his 1994 classic Head Like a Rock has such an effect and it is advisable to have someone there to hold onto when listening to this incredibly personal and touching recording.
A man of Liverpool through and through, his musings of his late father, rise to musician fame and thoughts of London are all wrapped up in this album and even with the added addition of a further disc with some superb extras placed carefully by the artist it doesn’t detract from the heady mixture of profound, delicately private and upbeat sensational that Head Like A Rock provides.
From the start of the album each song is captured in such a way that it is impossible to ignore. It has depth of feeling that the listener would normally associate with any of Mr. McNabb’s work, either with The Icicle Works, any of the side projects he has continually worked upon or his own rather particular path, however this re-master has something more. It may be that in Liverpool it is hard to ignore the legend behind the man and along with other members of his generation who blazed the path for the 21st century youth renaissance to follow, he is just too good to be kept quiet.
His thoughts on songs such as You Must Be Prepared To Dream, the compelling Child Inside A Father, the downbeat guitar, the thoughtful humming and yet sultry Sad Strange Solitary Catholic Mystic and the hopeful This Time Is Forever make any attempt to understand the man just that little bit easier.
Even if you bought the original album when first released, this piece of recording history, arguably one of the top three albums of Ian McNabb’s career, it should be one that you replace immediately with this utterly charming and filled to the brim with songs that make life just that little bit more bearable.
Ian D. Hall