Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When you are asked to look across the Atlantic and implored to describe what you might find, you would not be blamed or judged for thinking in terms of New York City, specifically the Island of Manhattan and whilst the towers gleam, the streets bustle with excitement and seemingly to the ghostly tunes of old style Jazz and Blues and the enticing face of Capitalism, it lures you in and then spits you out onto the streets, there is far more to the greater area that surrounds 42 Street, that looks across to the symbol of French platitudes and shines a beacon to the world.
Ozone Park, even for the seasoned traveller it would come as a surprise to find such a name nestling in the ideals of places to make a direct line of enquiry for, exotic to touch perhaps, but one that doesn’t initially have the same sense of purpose of say Battery Park. Yet, in that openly declared mistake of dreams the explorer is missing out, Queens may not be on the radar but it should not be abandoned, for from within this encampment of riches stirs a memory that has been let loose for a decade but to which incredibly, at least in Britain, has not undertaken the enjoyment weaved across the strands and delicate fibres of musical flexibility that Hollis Brown offer.
Across upbeat, powerful soliloquys and driven demands of resilience, songs such as Stubborn Man, She Don’t Love Me Now, The Way She Does It, Bad Mistakes and After The Fire, the attitude demonstrated is one of openness, a regime of sincere rapture under the prophetic and clinically cool.
For the personnel that make up Hollis Brown, it is arguably a signalling that the album is finding common ground with the wider audience, the Queen’s way of being direct and square-jawed honest is taken further, the claim on their own path is clearer than ever and Ozone Park is the pulled together symphony that encapsulates their time together; one that is a gratifying and positive result of class and drive.
Hollis Brown release Ozone Park on June 7th via Cool Green Recordings/Mascot Label Group.
Ian D. Hall