Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
From the revelation of admitting to Honest Crimes, to extoling the virtues of the depths of Winter, it seems Cats and Crows will always find a way to hold both intriguing sentiment and passionate feelings out from the musical cradle to the nesting place in which we raise our lives high above the blizzards and storms that beset us along the way.
It is a virtue, a tale far removed from twilight’s end and three years in the making that sees Cats and Crows’ Isaac Birchall and Andy Cooper seek out the dichotomy of frosted realisations and the warmth of hope and expectation in this follow up to the enjoyable and rightly lauded Honest Crimes.
The collaboration between the two musicians goes deeper than teamwork or mere alliance, the sound created, the songs performed, it bears all the hallmarks of endearing partnership, a union of minds fighting against the bleakness and leaving snow prints to warmer, more agile climes in their wake. As Percy Bysshe Shelley admiringly observed, “O’ wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
It is in the depths of Winter that plans for the year ahead are sown, ideas are forged, and defences tightened, Winter is where we place our trust in those around us to keep us warm and alive, to keep us in their minds.
Across songs such as My Friends On The Wall, Up In The Sky, Alone Again, Winter and The Race To The Bottom, Cats and Crows look to the image that the season provides, and instead turns it on its head, in much the same way that the old Anglo Saxon calendar and the venerable Bede treated it more as a ritual offering, a chill wind in February, winter’s height, is a time in which to make offerings of bread, lasting hope for the harvest ahead. It is such an offering that sees this particular Winter hope and achieve it maximum celebration.
The season of winter may leave some feeling the depths of concern, of worry that spring, and more importantly summer, will not arrive, but in the hands of Cats and Crows it is assured; rosy cheeks and stories by the log fire is the order very much put out this day, a winter’s tale of wonderful musicianship.
Cats and Crows’ Winter is out now.
Ian D. Hall