Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
How far can a song take you, how much are we willing to allow, to permit your heart to feeling the direction of dichotomy as it lurches like an out-of-control pendulum between heartbreak and affirmation of spirit. As both emotions centre of the self, as they govern how other’s see us at our most vulnerable, The Beat Goes On is the understanding that the heart and mind are there to remind us to keep believing we will not surrender to others who demand defeat and capitulation of the soul.
Sean Taylor knows only too well just how important the beat is, and as he releases his eleventh studio album, The Beat Goes On, the sense of reaction to the issues at play, those incurables and drums of desertion that cloud our judgement and leave us under pressure, tightly coiled and ready to abandon the fight, is one that must be not only noticed, but urged to fight the demons placed within the heartbeat by those with dangerous and evil intent.
There can be no stopping the light, and we must search for it in every darkened room, every missing streetlamp’s gaze, and as Sean Taylor shows across the ten original songs, and one rather expressive and poignant interpretation of American Poet Laureate Robert Frost captivating stanza driven poem A Line Storm Song, the sublime Be My Love In The Rain, light in all its forms is what we hold closest when the demons start running the show.
Tracks of intrigue, sadness, hope, beauty and perspective dominate any landscape, and in songs such as the openers It’s Always Love and Lament For The Dead, as well as Nocturne, Nowhere To Hide, Let Kindness Be Your Kind and the album’s finale of The Heart Of The Ocean all acknowledge the drama and the experience of taking the fight to the miseries and defenders of pain, they also offer the one human need that rises like an island out of the stormy sea, that of hope, simple, and yet effective hope.
It is perhaps to the track Back On The Road that the album shows its true self, a track that highlights hope in all its vagaries and beliefs, a song of the troubadour, of the performing artist at play, for in these times where the darkness threatens to overload the spirit, the reminder of what we need, what we truly enjoy, is the company of the light on stage and the illumination in the heart released.
A wonderful album, The Beat Goes On is sincere, full of radiance and care. You would expect nothing less from Sean Taylor.
Ian D. Hall