Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The release is slow, dreamlike, a vision that unfolds via the slightest of twists to the barrel of the kaleidoscope, the pattern emerging, disappearing, reforming with an innovative subtly. To find such an arrangement is always possible in art, but to come across it, to find the beauty in the female harmony as each note drips with the sentiment of colour, of a psychedelic waterfall crashing onto the rocks below and splintering rainbows decorating the remains, that is the revelation which makes the purpose of life one of a vast array of possibilities which must be grasped.
To be moored in a vision is one of the keys to life, to actively attempt with purpose to make that vision work for you and all that may come across it, is the answer to a lot of humanity’s problems, we are too quick to disembark from another version of reality, in too much of a hurry to dispel the notion that being part of a dream is a bad option. One must find one’s set of Berths where one can, after all we are soon set loose upon an unforgiving ocean that means to do all it can to either cause us to be adrift, or to capsize us, to drag us under the weight of other’s expectations.
Following on from the albums For Those Who Wish To See The Glass Half Full and How To Keep Falling Off A Mountain, Slowness rise once again into the crawl space between dreamlike and imagination and find a room that has been untouched for some time, dust sheets waiting to pulled off in an act reminiscent of the magician getting into their stride, and finally the reveal that comes across the songs that make up Berths, The Fall, Rose, Berlin, Breathe, Sand & Stone and Asunder which cement Geoffrey Scott, Julie Lynn and Christy Davis’ attitude of San Francisco hedonism but with a chilled out vibe that captures the future inspiration of the listener to its coolest demeanour.
An album which dedicates itself to exploration, setting free from the stifling jetty, but one which has the charts to circumnavigate the whirlpools of disaster, and the rocks of misunderstanding; Berths is a recording of ingenuity and rightly baptised with the best bottle of champagne available.
Slowness’ Berths is out now and available via Schoolkids Records.
Ian D. Hall