Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Well told stories never end, they find ways to adapt, to reach out with greater intensity and love, their emotions heightened by the continual appreciation and the way that others interpret the tale for others to hold on to and spread the word. If only we could all hold that type of power, that sense of engaged passion that others seek out, and for one of Liverpool’s most elegantly gifted songwriters, John Jenkins, his latest album, released in July, sees a wonderfully creative adaption conceived by the equally respected Jim Pearson, unveiled.

Too Many Roads (Restless Hearts Covered) is an honour of collaboration, a dignified unselfish relationship between friends, colleagues, admirers, and artists, and one that strides fearlessly between the expected polish and the human arrangement of the intimately scored.

To find such an array of talent, one freely given with a smile and desire, is to understand the depth of veneration in John Jenkins work. From critical acclaim and to local high regard to his music, the contrast of lyrical endeavour is sheer and detailed, and as artists such as Helen Flunder, Ann Radcliffe, John Booth, David Nixon’s Navigation, Ian F Ball, John Armstrong, and Jim Pearson himself all add to the engaging story telling and lyrically fierce movements, so the evidence of Mr. Jenkins’ arguably finest work comes to a natural and unrepentant sense of permanency, of being the deserved focus of the West Kirby Friday Night Musical Group, to the city in which he plied his trade and insights, and to the greater world beyond.

Tracks such as The Disappearance, Colorado In The Spring, Brooklyn, The Not Knowing, Farthings Wood, and I Didn’t Really Want To Change The World fill the listener’s soul with exuberance and longing, of melancholy and dreams unbound; and the result is a reverence, rightly, for the music and the man.

Too Many Roads (Restless Hearts Covered) is an extraordinary piece of work, one that is complimentary but never overshadows, one that is equal but always aware of the past it emulates; and to which is a joy to behold.

Ian D. Hall