Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
To tumble from grace is to find yourself! There is a certain freedom attached to being so low that the view from above can be an inspiration. If you have everything then you are too afraid to lose it and The Fall Of Eden is a long and bumpy road in which there is heartache, pain and grief, but there is also the chance of redemption in liberty. It is a redemption and liberty in which Kenneth J. Nash captures exquisitely in The Fall Of Eden.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
A gentle demeanour is never lost in life. The soothing tones of a musician seemingly at peace with themselves is never truly overshadowed by the storm that rampages around them, the squall and the rough tidal surges that drown out the less romantic find ways to inspire the artistically gifted. For Boo Hewerdine if the squall and blizzards of life affect him, then his music doesn’t show it, not outwardly possibly but like all great artists there is something of the dark attached within the moving, almost sensual lyrics that command the same attention as coming across the flowing beast that is the River Nile for the first time.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Every time Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten releases an album, it’s an opportunity for the listener to check out her state of mind. An intimate setting like The Library, was the perfect platform for her selection of unguarded, confessional narratives, in a set which drew heavily from her most recent release Are We There’.
You once declared me to be the unrepentant Black Sheep
and then tried to laugh with damning justification of my actions,
but all I could hear from your woollen mouth
was the constant bleating of the high and mighty wronged.
The black wool is there as a reminder of the mistakes I have regretfully made,
but you never cared to mention the whiteness of my stomach
compared the nasty deep smoke stained, barbeque ready,
yellow belly that hides underneath your disgusting grandeur.
The Black Sheep found another flock in which to keep time with,
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Catrin Aaron, David Birrell, Natalie Casey, Edward Harrison, Javier Marzan, Robin Morrissey, Eileen O, Brien, Lucy Phelps, Graeme Rooney, Voice of Ken Dodd.
History has a way of repeating itself, what goes round will no doubt come round again. It is the comfort in the despairing knowledge that for every action…the same mistakes will be played out, over and over again and the same fortitude shown in national absurdity relied upon. For those old enough to remember the period in which an inept leader of the country was finally shown the door and the nation stumbled upon the lost ideals of the Sexual Revolution, Stephen Sharkey’s Sex And The Three Day Week is an homage to the strife, internal conflict of repressed sexuality and people making the most of the black-outs.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The wheels of Time constantly turn but they never seem to move very far from certain seminal points that repeat themselves over and over again. When it comes to nostalgia and thinking back to how much Time has irrevocably altered and magnified certain pieces of art, then the re-master, re-issue or just plain re-discovery of a lost epic is enough to make Time smile and make its heart go a little faster.
Marillion at the ABC, Glasgow. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The point of the journey, as Rush once said, is not to arrive. By completing the journey, all that you have learned about yourself can turn eventually to dust and atoms. It is perhaps a finer, arguably more noble, pursuit to keep travelling, to keep the finishing line hidden from view, to never have the experience of something ending less it eat away at you and allows the dust which holds the joints and creaking crevices together to inch by delicate inch slowly fade away.
Peter Gabriel at the Echo Arena, Liverpool. December 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
For many, Peter Gabriel is still seen as “The Progfather”, the man who defined a generation and stunning musical narration with a theatrical bent and who still gets talked of lovingly as perhaps being able to capture those moments of outstanding early Genesis releases. To others he is the man who played his part in bringing down a regime so vile and disturbing that it sends a shiver down the spine when images from that time are shown on television.
Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is perhaps beyond the compression or wildest dreams of any fan of music to understand what must go through the minds of the support act when they open up for what is considered a living legend. For many in a crowd just being in the vicinity of the front row of the gig is a claustrophobic and overwhelming prospect.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’ Dowd, Terrance Howard, Jaeden Lieberher, Kimberly Quinn, Lenny Venito, Nate Corddry, Dario Barosso, Donna Mitchell, Ann Dowd, Scott Adsit, Reg E. Cathey, Deirdre O’Connell.
Vincent is a man whose life seems to be one of which has gone the way of so many in cities and rural areas in America. The dream that once encapsulated that arguably captured all that was good in the land of the free has soured and gone past its sell-by date, all there is to look forward to for many is the daily existence granted by fate in which the daily struggle is just another excuse to be kicked in the face by a country that has forgotten them.