Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Sometimes you have to fear the darkness you perceive, at others it is best to grin at the emotion and embrace it, to make it fear you.
Advice is often given with a double-edged sword, it is ruled by control, and as the rough end of the tongue will torture the receiver if not followed exactly to the letter. We can only hope that Maybe Someday advice and the darkness are accepted as being a choice that we can ignore without being made to feel guilt, or concern.
Advice and fear are sibling emotions, they both rule with conviction, we allow them to breed, doubting our own mind and comparing our lives to others, the psycho-drama of the 21st Century is played out routinely and without mercy. It is in this grasp that Tombstones In their Eyes prise open the fingers of the merciless and offer a solution to the problem and without demanding subservience to their own point of view; the best advice offered is take it or leave it, and for John Treanor, Mike Mason, Josh Drew, Stephen Striegel and James Cooper, the opinion is replaced by counsel, by the warm heart of listening, by attending to the musical needs of the listener.
The songs rifle through with speed but they also embed themselves in to the heart of the matter, that Maybe Someday is but a dream, a recluse with intelligence and a warm embrace and as tracks such as I Want You, Down In The Dirt, Behind My Mind, I Can’t Feel It Anymore and the album’s title track, Maybe Someday lift the lid on the perceived fear that binds and slaps down with a crushing fist at the way it infects the mind as it crawls through every facet of being, what is most heeded is the sound, deep, pulsating and unrelenting, so open that it casts fear back into the shadows and advice down the throat of the ignorant.
An album that conjures up the art of resistance to the shaky emotions that prey on our minds is to be enjoyed, there is no preaching, no hand wringing, just good songs that Maybe Someday, maybe now, should stand as testament to understanding our own piece of mind.
Tombstones In Their Eyes’ Maybe Someday is out now and available from Somewherecold Records.
Ian D. Hall