Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There almost never seems to be a day go by when the new breed of Liverpool bands finds a way in which to grab hold of the listeners hands, takes them down a seemingly deserted alleyway and then shows them the bustling lights and active highway that stretches out before them as the music of a distinct set of musicians illuminates the sky.
For Joe Symes and the Loving Kind, their latest single Things Get Better is one of those moments in which illumination reaches beyond the edge of town and connects with such ferocity that the trailing sparks can be seen far beyond the horizon and seem as of the stars themselves have decided they cannot compete and have thrown themselves down onto the plain old Earth in spite.
Things Get Better, they nearly always do, it is the nature of such things, yet how does it get better when you are consistently on the top of your game, when you can place a tune that has both a home-grown audience placing their trust in all they survey in it and having crowds from other cities and places seemingly as yet untouched by the band’s growing allure, claiming the song as one of their own. In a similar vein the world in which Oasis traversed during the Brit Pop explosion, so to do Joe Symes and the Loving Kind find themselves and it is easy to see why when the songs addictive lyrics and fine guitars fuse with Colin White’s merciless abundant drums.
Things get better and yet there is no turning away from the realisation of what Joe Symes and the Loving Kind, as well as the other guardians of 21st Liverpool arts, offer the outside world, the collapse of so called Western Civilisation could come along and yet in a corner of Northern England, the shred of common decency that arts allow to roam free, would surely be seen as the beacon of hope to which illumination soars.
A song of great passion from Joe Symes and the Loving Kind, but then you would hardly expect anything less.
Ian D. Hall