Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
All that you believe that you know, is but a partial understanding of the whole picture. We see the finished canvas that has had artist’s angst plagued upon it, the countless hours of dedication, of fear, of joy, but we never notice, unless we are truly fortunate, the change that overcomes, not just the painter, but every artist or lover of a particular skill to which they not only want to master, but which they wish to adapt, to bend in a new and exciting direction.
Arguably one of Liverpool’s most well-known voices and personalities, Sue Hedges has never stood still in her industrious pursuit of the new and the adventurous, she does not shy away from performing her creations, her Songs In A Different Light, and in what is surely a fully immersive and pulsating release, Ms. Hedges brings a remarkable new album to the listener’s attention and with it an innovative sense of purpose in which the pleasure of performance can be heard across the board and in more importantly in her heart.
Sue Hedges has always enthralled, so many songs, covers that melt your own beating engine behind the ribs, moments of pure excellence, and yet as Songs In A Different Light begins to play, the listener can feel a tremor of emotion they perhaps had not heard before, an ingredient that nobody realised was missing, and as tracks such as I Was Bored…In My Sleep, A Song We Lost In Time, The Wrong Dream, 1,000 lights, the explosive Fire And Brimstone and the album title track, Songs In A Different Light, all give thanks for having the honest and deft creative touch applied to them, that tremor of emotion becomes clear, it resonates, and whilst nobody but the performer would know the reason for its appearance, it would be fair to suggest that it comes from a place of resounding light, of nimble and graceful musical purity.
An astonishing album, one of absolute dynamic and continued beat, an album that rightly refuses to allow time to dictate the movement; for this is purely at the behest of one of the most talented women around; absolutely priceless.
Ian D. Hall