Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The Seasons come and go, some with the bluster of a damaged ego, some with a lazy haze that seeps into the bones and makes us lay in hopeful pastures overlooking bubbling swimming streams. The personality of each season may not be of concern to the vast majority of humanity, more troubled by the unease of the monthly, daily, change of events, but it must be noted that as the cold anger of February and the war like heat of August shape our lives, so to do the seasons, the high council of climate and time, have the right to be felt and appreciated by even the smallest of creatures.
Seasons felt and embraced; into such differing cyclical arrangements so we move our own sentiments and emotions, our sensitivities to the clemency or the austere callous chill we encounter; and yet in any season, music must also fall, not upon deaf ears, not with scarves covering the senses or as a backdrop to sunny days and whispered dreams of autumn, but fully immersed, the sound of a true year passing us by and imploring us to make everyday count.
For Graeme James, the seasons represents a period in which he arguably came to terms with his own place on Earth, a man out of season perhaps, from native New Zealander and Southern Hemisphere periodic change, and arriving in the Netherlands, another world even if not in name, can feel as though the planet has turned upside down, that the seasons need to be rearranged in a manner keeping with our own perception.
It is to Graeme James intriguing and beguiling album that Seasons come together, and as tracks such as the excellent The Tallest Tree, Field Notes On An Endless Day, All The Lives We Ever Lived, Memories Of Tomorrow, The Voyage Of The James Caird, and The Weight Of Many Winters that proof that you can be out of season, but never out of step, that the grace within will find a way to illuminate your soul’s own position in the night sky, and whether in spring storm or in autumn bliss there is always evidence of the need to hoist your own sail and provide a backdrop to the way your heart feels.
Seasons is the personification of grace bestowed, of looking beyond the minutes and hours and planning for the variations and change upon us; for Graeme James it is a splendid time regardless.
Graeme James releases Seasons on April 1st via Nettwerk Records.
Ian D. Hall