Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is no point owning a book if you are only ever going to read one chapter at random, if you are going to take one arbitrary sentence and turn it into a mantra for living and believe that it will solve all humanity’s ills and negative aspects; to truly understand the author you have to read the whole thing, you must listen to their words and decipher them, live them fully and drive onto the biggest peak, the largest summit you can master.

Gunpowder Tracks is a book that could have been written in a different time, one that finds the voice of a different kind of product from the age than the 1960s turn on, tune in, drop out hymn cascaded around as if it was the final wish of a generation living in the shadow of peace, love, war and rampant opportunism, but still one that holds its lofty ideals to the time when music was all that truly mattered, that it was the one thing that kept society together.

It is a book, a musical moment of art that sees Mason Summit once more collaborate with John McDuffie and one that each song found within the album as one as if written down as a chapter, as the follow through on life, the sights seen by a young man and his responses to each passing minute; it is the reply that Kerouac would have enjoyed penning and one that keeps the grit, the beauty and the polished stone all in one familiar and absorbing place.

With Shawn Nourse, Jeff Turmes, Carl Byron, John McDuffie, Matt Fish, Lynn Coulter, Chad Watson and Neil Rosengarden joining in the action as if carefully placed in the narrative and each adding a moment of true desire to the melancholic, experimental and smooth delivery. It is in that craving that makes Gunpowder Tracks one of a journey, one that keeps time in the lyrics and offers insight into the heart of the musician.

In tracks such as Cellophane Skin, When Time Was Mine To Spend, Snakeskin Shoes and Hitting All The Reds the poet emerges, rises to the challenge and lets the music pour over the words as if the two found themselves as lovers one perfect day in the middle of rainforest.

A wonderfully entrancing set of songs that make the book interesting throughout; this is not a paragraph or a well meaning phrase of songs, this is a bound and gilt edged read in which the hero stands tall.

Ian D. Hall