Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Quieten down and listen, Hush Your Mouth and take notice of more than just the usual names to which you believe fill your musical world…the universe of aural pleasure and revelation is constantly shifting, renewing, renovating, and even in the period that you grow up in, your generation, there are bands and musicians that you will come across but somehow, inexplicably, not see how great they are, how in tune with the period, the yesterdays, the tomorrows – The Betterdays in which you found yourself singing along with life and Time, those bands were.
The 60s were a time of expansion, everywhere you looked there were groups forming, changing the tempo of the area in which they had seen through formative eyes their locality, their homes and family altered by the events of the darkest days of the 20th Century, the songs of hope, the measure of reason, the joy of performing, all captured in the need to make the most of life, and to tell you’re their own story, in their own voice.
Whilst London had The Kinks, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, Liverpool had innumerable acts, including The Beatles, The Liverbirds, and Gerry And The Pacemakers, and Birmingham had The Move, Carl Wayne, and the fledgling The Moody Blues, the quiet of the West Country was about to explode with arguably one of the finest bands to exist outside of England’s three main epicentres of music.
The Betterdays were authentic in everyway possible. Hailing from Plymouth, the sound they created would have perhaps been seen at the time as being equal to that supplied by the larger groups around, and yet because they stayed true to their hometown, not wishing to swap the beauty of The Tamar and the nestling history of Plymouth Hoe for the overcrowded nightlife of London, the dynamic of Liverpool, they somehow become lost to history, only resurfacing decades later when they were afforded the opportunity to create the album they missed out on earlier in their career.
Hush Your Mouth (The Betterdays Anthology) is a complete and opulent bringing together of the music for the West Country Kings of Garage R & B, and across two cd’s, across 48 tracks, time itself is given a reboot, the chance to administer love and respect to a group that had every bit of musical progression as The Yardbirds and The Kinks, every bit of subtlety of creation as The Move, and perhaps arguably would have stood up alongside The Beatles had they been given credit for not leaving home and selling out their soul.
The soul of The Betterdays is important, that West Country application of life, like Liverpool caught on the banks of one of England’s great rivers and being influenced by far off magical tales from cities and countries that most could only dream of being able to visit, this is the driving force behind the anthology; and it is one that outstandingly raw and polished at the same time, one that has had great care placed upon it, and as songs and standards such as Here ‘Tis, Cracking Up, Roadrunner, You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover, Working Man, Don’t Start Me To Talking, Hello Josephine, Parchman Farm, and Aw Shucks Hush Your Mouth, leave their indelible and sizeable impression on the listener, so to does the reasoning of the band’s popularity, and why they didn’t want to leave the area to which gave them the inspiration to write, to be part of.
Hush Your Mouth (The Betterdays Anthology) is a recognition of what should have been and now is, a refusal to let greatness go unrecognised, to not let the tide go out on one of the best bands of the time, and address finally the West Country’s contribution to art. Alongside the giants of literature that have been embraced who called Devon and Cornwall their home, so to The Betterdays, Plymouth’s finest are to be lauded and listened to with eager ears.
Ian D. Hall