Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Sentiment, the reaction to something that grabs the musical spirit and allows it grow over time into a positive and perhaps enlightening response that allows the human imagination to remember where they were when they first heard a particular song and the imagery that flashed before their eyes.

Sentiment is something that some people cannot bear, they somehow believe it to be a weak and burrowing beast that inflicts maudlin and mawkish behaviour, the reminisance of a kiss from your first love 30 years apart, the outlandish momentary self-pity over too many beers but soberly reflected upon the next day with reddening faces, all will be trashed by those perhaps with stunted emotions as the sign of an anaemic heart devoid of strength and valour. For the voice of The Autumn Ghost and Kaukasus, the divine Rhys Marsh, Sentiment is something to immerse yourself fully into and blow those that tell you anything than the emotion of sentiment is a powerful tool to have at your side.

The solo album from Rhys Marsh is one in which certain forces collide, timing and the ability to write about a specific memory, the power of recall but wrapped up in a darkness that a lighthouse couldn’t penetrate and an atmosphere that could support life and allow it to fester and multiply like bacteria in the stomach quicker than a petrie dish could muster on a good day; Sentiment is good, it is healthy and aids the memory but when allowed to be submerged and fostered upon the unwilling, it can take a delicious turn and become something more tangible than should be seen.

To bury your head against the oncoming swollen and rampaging tide is a fruitless occupation, sometimes it is better to let the emotions wash over you whilst raging against the moon that causes the surge and in tracks such as the opener Calling In The Night, the exquisiteness of The Seventh Face, the disturbing coldness that envelops Last November, Silver Light & Blackened Eyes and the abrupt, immediate emotional sounding Give Me What You Need, the uncompromising nestles with the expressive in ways that can only be described as brutally delightful.

Rhys Marsh is a man of many talents, to get an audience to roar against the unstoppable tide and accept that Sentiment is as honest an emotion as any is nothing short of outstanding. Sentiment is a dream of a debut, clear, concise and all the while wrapped up in the arms of gentleness, darkness may prevail but it has a hell of a fight on its hands.

Ian D. Hall