Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The temptation of Las Vegas is such that it has inspired a multitude of songs, a myriad of films, and a plethora of dreams, who can blame a single person for understanding this peculiar American desire to get rich quick surrounded by the sense of multi-coloured excess and the sound of machine designed to send the emotions whirling.
Sit back and relax, feed the coins till the machine repays you with a glimmer of hope, allow the smells and experiences to win you over, and give way to the soundtrack of a world where the illusion of class is in fact a nightmare of over indulgence set against a desert where nuclear bombs were tested, and where you can be a millionaire in any fantasy you care to mention.
It is with cheer and insight that Liverpool’s David Neville King lays claim to one of the best songs about the city that millions visit but never truly experience, forget Elvis Presley and his tub thumping track set to a beat designed to make you swoon, the lack of depth cornered by Faith Hill, and a myriad of others that followed the repetitive noise of slot machines and murder, simply listen to the remarkable weaving of tension wrapped around a truth of the original American Sin City in his new single, Vegas.
The song is energy and excitement, but it is also itching for understanding, a fight in close quarters between what people perceive on the surface, and what they find if they look harder beneath the razzamatazz and the glitz of fantasy.
Vegas is the latest in a long, stirring, and beautiful line of singles released by Mr. King, a veritable feast of classics that includes the phenomenal Ginger McCain, and it is with thanks to the artist and musician that these songs keep coming, that they are with us to listen to and learn from, to take comfort in.
A single of passion, of reflection, a lament, a rousing dream in which we all want to be the win that hears the sirens blare in honour, and which for a while we are the centre of a world that we cannot but hope to be the toast of.
Ian D. Hall