Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If something doesn’t fit, you make room it wherever you can; nothing should ever be discarded or found to be unwanted, the point of life is not minimalism, but to crowd every sector of your life and space of your being with memories and recollections, of memorials to those we have loved and sadly lost.
‘Kondo-ism’ at its core insists on organisation, but it also means letting go of what doesn’t fit, and that is a dangerous situation to place yourself, especially when a memory sparked by love is presented just by the opportune picking up of a once thumbed novel, the release of recall when a certain song or the smell of an old perfume fills the air; no matter The Reason for that memory, it is there because we made it fit, we gave it room in our hearts and on our shelves.
John Jenkins’ Tuebrook album was such that it was a modern anthem of love in itself; yet as with every artist there is always more that is set aside because of constraints, of themes perhaps not quite fitting…but it is never lost, never thrown away, always there ready for the moment when it is required to bring a core memory to the surface.
The Reason is the first of six singles to be released monthly in 2024, and the track itself is one that will the breath of the listener, one that will stir and recognise the faces of the past and those that held us unconditionally, through upset, with pride, when the world was off balance, they straightened it for us, and when we let them go that last time, when we saw the light fade, we hopefully made a promise in which we would always make them proud of our actions and achievements.
Unconditional love means never throwing anything away, that even on the crammed shelves we can still fit another memory on and make it feel as special as it deserves, and that is exactly what the musician has triumphed once again in doing.
The Reason is a song of absolute love, it is unreserved and unrestricted in its hopes and fierce loyalty, a deserved place in the ever-undaunted collection of John Jenkins songs.
Ian D. Hall