Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Any music fan craves for the moment when they hear something for the first time that will make the hairs on the back of the neck stand up and the feeling of being transported beyond their self-imposed comfortable surroundings and that takes them to a continent of sound that is full of drama, style, substance and mystery, a place where growth is a two way street, where the performer is transformed and has put themselves into a position where they embody theatre.
You can be rooted in one particular genre, you can attempt to hide from the music that others employ to provoke empathy or meaning, but when the feeling of beauty hits you like you have just witnessed a star exploding in the night sky, then you know that your heart has been opened to a new approach of thinking.
Rosalie Cunningham steps out of the shadows of her former band Purson and releases her self-titled debut album, one that frames the feeling of being saved from the imposing damage sought by others, the tinted beige and the self-consumed and instead offers a direction to which the listener is delighted to follow and join. It is in the psychedelic that the vision appears, the hypnotised reality that is presented and the future opened up like a rare flower, blooming, creative with its appeal and one that gestures with heat, melancholic passion and longing, and yet one that is outstandingly unique.
From start to finish, Rosalie Cunningham’s debut solo album is a wonder, a seismic rumble from underground that threatens to take you out of your mind, but instead wraps you in a veil of calm and serenity. Across songs such as Ride On My Bike, Fuck Love, Dethroning Of The Party Queen, Riddles and Games and the excellent, spellbinding finale of A Yarn From The Wheel, the album is an exotic earthquake, not a single building destroyed, no crack in the musical pavement to see. Instead, it livens the joint up, it makes the audience see that life is for the now and to listen to the heartbeat of the Cosmos rather than the worry of what lays in the past.
An enthralling album, Rosalie Cunningham has touched genius in this dramatic, pulse-driven recording.
Rosalie Cunningham releases her self-titled debut album on July 5th.
Ian D. Hall