Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Not everything in life needs to be shouted, screamed at the pace of a jet fighter roaring over an oil field with soldiers protecting the peace underneath or the rush and exhilaration of a football championship decider. Not everything needs the roar, sometimes the quietest word can grip hold of life more eloquently than the damnation of a thousand rhetoric speeches of hate can ever achieve.

For The New Line, led by Brendan Taaffe, the whisper of ghosts is far more effective an instrument than the bluster and bombastic nature of a preacher imploring his flock with images of Hell Fire. The gentle breeze of his new album Can’t Hold The Wheel, more coaxing than the raging tempest and his use of instruments such as the wonderful mbira, pump organ, gourd banjo and trumpet far more effective in the re-imaging of old ballads that hang in the hills of the Appalachian mountains or the deep wide open spaces  of Africa.

This is music from the Earth, the very soil in which we inhabit and played as if the stars had joined forces to make a bright light appear just once on a certain time in music. The whisper, the gentleness of Brendan Taaffe’s vocals play hypnotically and intimately with the senses whilst the band, Adam Hurt, Stefan Amidon, Colin McCaffrey, Mike Olson and Heather Masse push the perceived music further than could be impressed upon.

Whilst the mbira and the banjo could well be thought of odd bedfellows, like watching Stalin grapple the finer points of international diplomacy with President Reagan, what comes out of that tussle works rather splendidly and throughout the album Adam Hurt’s banjo and Brendan Taaffe’s mbira make an excellent team.

From the soothing, swaying feeling of train rumbling through the uneven countryside of Poland, the musical journey is one that you might not have thought to take but somehow becomes one of the most memorable and indeed satisfying moments you will live through. Tracks such as Red Rocking Chair, the crafted delight in Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, the undisguised joy in hearing The Old Churchyard, The Blackest Crow and Goodnight Irene all make Can’t Hold The Wheel such an embarrassment of riches, an abundance of the Appalachian and African so willing to be heard.

The greatest moment is when you realise that all the noise outside your window has been reduced to a sigh; that is when you notice that shouting doesn’t work and that a whisper of music is sometimes a greater achievement.

Ian D. Hall