Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Christmas and the subsequent passing of the hour in which the twelve days of the festive season melds seamlessly with the dying of the twelve months of yet another forceful bout with Time, come but once a year. In the hands of the corporate, the period can descend into slush, mawkishness and frightful displays of money corrupting the ideal of what the period is meant to be about.
To have Shine, the subtle Gaelic tones and whispers of twin electro harp and a single ravenous beauty of the glockenspiel employed by Mary Macmaster, Corrina Hewat and Alyth McCormack, return just in time to put their own indelible stamp on the festive truth is both a passionate discharge of blazing glory and the merry chill of memories past come tumbling down and presenting itself as a perfect storm of Fire & Ice.
The five strong E.P. is a calming response to the sound of tills chirping their desperate mating call, it is the measured joy which sings with elation and the crowd that can’t be heard placing their time and effort into a piece which goes against modern thinking.
Within the five songs there is the sound of three talented musicians capturing a simple truth, that the end of the year is not to be celebrated with over excess but with captivating charm, with a lullaby in which to keep the chill of winter away and the commemoration of passing and rebirth.
The five songs, Christ Child’s Lullaby, the tremendously cool Patapan, The Holly and the Ivy, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/All Shall Be Well and a delightful take on The Christmas Song glow with the mixture of Gaelic and English salutations, they bond together as if nothing can separate them; that they allow the passing of the year to be remembered with special thoughts rather than the crass gala spectacle we have come to expect.
To have these songs presented in such a way is to be seen as beautiful, unyielding, never plain, this is the stocking hanging over the bed and in which delight is shown for the ample gifts, the orange, the walnuts, the small toy of youth and the simplicity, the daring splendour offered is more than enough to make Christmas actually seem properly festive.
Ian D. Hall