Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Some people leave you in your oblique and obliging darkness happy to see you suffer under the weight of their own expectant failure, they curse your own breath as well as damning their own and they make it harder for you to like and appreciate their work. Some though, such as Paul Wilkes, don’t just place the listener back upright again, removing the slant-thought perspective that has been dragging them down, they insist that once they are done putting back together the musical soul that you also Take The Sunlight they have brought in to dispel the darkness.
The calming ray of sunshine, the gentle carousing that Paul Wilkes is able to install with his E.P., Take The Sunlight, reflects both the harmonious nature in which the E.P. leaps into the air with but also the feeling of depth, that it is taking the listener by the hand beyond the comfort of its own play area and into deeper waters, not to lead astray but to show that there is nothing to be frightened of beyond the first few feet of the shoreline.
It is that trust, that sense of committed confidence and dependability that the listener seeks in any music, even when they believe they are looking for something new, and in Paul Wilkes that trust is easy to feel and be inspired by.
The four song E.P. doesn’t just lead you out into stronger, more intense waters but will also leave you for a while without you even having realised it has done so, it is only after a while of solace and peace of listening to the songs Lonely Eyes, Sky Has Fallen, My Own and the E.P. title track that you realise you have been left to contemplate such things and the effect is gracious and palpable.
The songs are sweet, not in some derived saccharine rinsed way in which young teens might find first love, but beautiful, fulfilling and with just enough darkness still poking through the abundant sunshine to keep the listener grounded. It is that sincere sweetness that really makes Take The Sunlight an E.P of warm character, one that cannot help but be loved.
Ian D. Hall