Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are times when you don’t need to shout too hard about what you have found, the object, the piece of music or hitherto unseen action will always find a way to make itself known and inspire those who take the time to get to understand it and sit in quiet contemplation as each word, each syllable and note floats over them and through them.  Like the sea making its presence known through each grain of sand, the infiltration is slow, meticulous and all powerful.

Such is the effect that Silent Sleep has on their superb album Walk Me To The Sea, that heightened sense of emotion when you walk on to a rocky cove or the shingle of a well-worn beach is similar to the beauty of Christopher McIntosh’s debut opus. The softness of the music is entrancing, it pulls you in, not to overwhelm you in sound but in clarity, to make the listener relax in the tranquillity of still waters and completely be safe in the knowledge that there is no dangerous undercurrent threating to deluge you.

As with a lot of albums that rely on the abundance of talent, in this case an embarrassment of riches of musical aptitude, the meaning has to be delicately balanced. Too much of one particular instrument in one part could send the tranquillity to a point where the water is too deep, where the overuse would drown the sound. It takes a very good song-writer to keep that balance in check. In Christopher McIntosh’s hands, the songs on offer have that natural clam to them that make them enjoyable and comfortable.

Tracks such as Black Tide, the beauty of Liked Me After All, the despair of We’ve Fallen Out Again and the utter brilliance of a lyrical snapshot of On The Steps Of The Bombed Out Church make the album more than worthwhile, it marks the point in which knowledge of creating a record that makes the soul float through the day in a sort of serene repose, a benchmark for others to follow.

Walk Me To The Sea is an album in which to immerse yourself into and never let go.

Ian D. Hall