Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10
Poetry is not a thing, it is not unobtainable or accessible, it is the bed rock and foundation of everything that you observe, it frames your vision, and whether you find solace in its meaning or simply get agitated because of the supposed rules of engagement, it cannot, and will not, be denied its place in your heart.
The musician who employs poetry within the structure of the song, who feels the strength of virtue and pleasure teasing each other as if they were siblings fighting over the chance to be the first to use the new paint and paper in which to capture the image of the sun, is a miracle worker in a time when the art and the framing of the story has been relegated and subdued it seems to the annoyance of the repetitive cycle of the instant and immediate yawn that comes with the desire to make it all about the star, and not the intimacy and the relationship that is afforded in showing the listener a crafted tale of beauty.
Katie Spencer’s latest journey into the observance of her surroundings and placing them into a subtle range of complex emotional pictures is one that follows the poetic line. In Weather Beaten, the ripples of the sea are ferocious, but they also add colour to the vision, a solitary figure perhaps looking out to the horizon, bedraggled, washed ashore by tempest and storm and hardened, whilst all around is eroding, worn down, a sense of the melancholic pounding at the grains of sand that convey introspection and whispers of drama.
Across songs such as Drinking The Same Water, Hello Sun, You Came Like A Hurricane, Too High Alone and The Best Thing About Learning, Katie Spencer weaves through her vision with the intricacy of one skilled and blessed with the patience of a painter, of a poet searching on the beach for the right word in amongst the million broken shells and compacted illusions.
An album of deep sincerity, Weather Beaten is Katie Spencer’s perspective on all that she has observed, and one that is revealed as one sees the persistence of the elements as they endure upon the land.
Ian D. Hall