Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There was a time when discussing your more intimate details was reserved for the tabloid press and to further the rumour mill in your home town, to sow the seeds of jealousy, to take the pressure off the mind as you deal with how your Love Life is perceived. Now love is everywhere, it is not just all around, you can’t escape it, however, a carefree and over discussed love life is not the same as being committed, as bringing both sensuality and freedom to another’s soul, it is this naked, exposed and truth laid bare that makes Tawny Ellis’ new album one of beauty and the raw relationship that keeps the listener entranced.
Love can breed confidence, as well as the urge to feel fear and hope, and is to the confident approach, the sense of self-assurance and reliance in one’s own observations that Ms. Ellis asserts such drama and cool in the way the songs on the album; and it is not because she espouses the performance of the theatrical relationship, but because she whole heartedly endorses the maxim, the truth of loving life, in small measures, or to its absolute certainty, loving life is a bed rock and foundation to how we can embrace others, as well our own self-worth.
Love Life to the full, or as much as you are able, and with the lush, sensitive tone of Tawny Ellis as your guide, there is much to be gained by finding a place, a person, a memory that stirs you on to find that passion deep within yourself, the one you may have been denying, that you may have been neglecting; and across tracks such as Moonshine, No More, Powers That Be, Daddy, and the triumvirate of musical expressions of affection in the album’s title track, Love Life, Pretend Love and Deep End Of Love, what comes across is the momentum of belief, the act of tenderness and forgiveness in all the songs written.
To love life is not always possible, nobody should or would dare suggest such a thing, yet somehow there are occasions, moments of outstanding beauty to which we can hold dear, to affirm our own standing and to seek out new pleasure, never announce your own love life to wasted ears but declare that you certainly Love Life.
Tawny Ellis releases Love Life on July 24th.
Ian D. Hall