Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Time may move on, it may even stoke up the type of variations in quick succession that Charles Darwin spent most of his life studying but when it comes to the natural progression of a band, from one spectrum to another, the sweet sound of Sons of Mowgli is hard to beat. One that words of praise readily rests on the lips of the listener as they take in the words of the folk five-piece from Hoylake.
We Had A Time, the band certainly did judging by the sweetness and near serenity that the music gives over in abundance and thankfully that appreciation of Time is replicated and increased as the listener leans back and takes in a scintillating arrangement that somehow should really exist in the Folk genre, certainly not with five musicians vying for attention and not with the lightness of touch displayed in producing songs of joy, sorrow and banished lament.
We Had A Time alludes to the moment, the simplicity to be found in the brief exquisite and the source of joy that can be found in the creativity of the soul. Every album strives for this, as every artistic endeavour should, but some fall woefully short, some give way to the commercial and the thought of chasing headlines and the so called ease of life and yet all the time forgetting the honour in virtue.
For the Sons of Mowgli, the honesty involved in the album, the mixing of ukuleles, harmonica, strings and the quality of voice to be found in Dean Mack make songs such as One Day We’ll Get The Truth, Market Street, Tomorrow I Leave For Good and the album title track We Had A Time all the more enjoyable and one that might be seen as a closely guarded secret, a magnificent mollusc housing within its shell a pearl of indeterminable wealth.
It is that wealth of character that makes We Had A Time something to prize, a difference to the genre that perhaps takes a band with guile to achieve, one not afraid to look dissenters in the eye and say it doesn’t matter in the end what you think, the pearl is precious and beautiful, we have made something relevant and without compromise.
The musical jungle of Liverpool can be harsh, perhaps unforgiving at times, but for Sons of Mowgli, there is a clearing in which they can ply their trade with honour ensured.
Ian D. Hall