Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is a time to be practical and there is a time to immerse yourself in beauty, the lie of grace, the sincerity of belief, and if you are fortunate these strangers will be chance or design, get together and find common ground in which to share time with an audience, in which to be considered a storm which possesses the roots of all that would make any artist blush with pride at the abundance of feeling in which to work with.
We follow our dreams, even if we have to change course to realise them, and quite often the physical move away from what may be considered comfortable, what may have influenced us to some extent before, is reinvigorated by seeing the world from another angle, another place in our own time; somewhere we can Dream On, no matter what our name is to others.
For Ewan Macintyre, emigration to Canada in 2014 has opened up new horizons, the large, sometimes empty skies giving way to new monoliths sparkling away like jewels in a crown, are the aphrodisiac of imagination required to give semblance and sentiment to the belief of delving into his own transatlantic dream and formulating a distinctive blend that swing, soul, blues and country merge, but also with his own personality and love of the Celtic movement swaying at the edges like long green grass caught in a breeze and adding depth to the vision opening up for the artist, and his followers, alike.
For the Ewan Macintyre Band, Dream On Sally is a natural progression of music to which the core group inhale as if taking a first breath of pure Canadian air. With Karine Bouchard and Peter Menzies adding immense cello and string style to Ewan Macintyre’s vision, tracks such as Eyes On The Road, Bright Lights & Pictures, Muckle Mouth, Breaks & Waves and the album’s finale of the album’s title track Dream On Sally reveal a sensitivity of expression, but one that is not afraid to stand up to the rigours of intense delight when it is called for.
With guest artists such as Ian Belcourt, Alex Auldsmith, Dana Babineau-Burns, Amanda Gibeau and Antoine Larocque adding uniqueness to the project at hand, and Ewan Macintyre painting a picture of time served across different aspects of nature and belief, Dream On Sally is an aural painting designed to free the soul from the delusions and nightmares of constrained existence.
A beautiful sound urged to roam free!
Ewan Macintyre Band release Dream On Sally on November 14th.
Ian D. Hall