Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We are, by and large, a species that documents everything, from the smallest detail to the earth-shattering reveals that have shaped and formed our perceptions of the world, a moment’s certification of recorded thought in print or online can reveal much about the fractured notion of society, the modern world we inhabit, often scarily not participating in, but simply existing within.
The only way perhaps we can participate now is by being an observer, the passive seer patiently scribing, scribbling, maintaining a balance of words that in hope, in essence will be seen, even heard for the truth they contain. This is the Tourist effect, actively contributing outside of the lines, writing words of praise, or of damnation, warnings, cautionary tales of unseen indications of cracks in the surface of the roads to democracy and forewarnings of demonstrations of deceit, damage, aggressive lies cheered on by the mob and the seemingly righteous.
It is to the likes of Anthony Ruptak, pen in hand, a poet’s heart surrounded by the soul of a journalist, and to whom the album that he handles with a consideration of absolution, Tourist, brings a great intelligence to the music that encompasses his presence.
Across songs such as Trauma Naked, Phantasmagoria, the probing Is This Real Life?, Shitshow, Lenny’s Rest, and the opening prophetic statement of the album’s title track, the clarity of compassion from this aural mirror, Tourist, all combine to throw a kind of drama filled lifeline to the listener, awarding them the reality that they know to exist but which have been condemned for even thinking.
Anxiety is not our friend, but helps clear the mud from our eyes, it pushes us to be bolder, more succinct in our approach, to write with open heart in our respective ledgers, and whilst it can cause a dampening of spirit it must always be the case that we acknowledge its existence, as a tourist, as born and bread citizen of the global concern, and whether we reach the high of exquisite introspection in the same way that Anthony Ruptak manages or not, at least our view point on paper can never be denied.
A detailed album of personal legacy, of studious brooding wrapped up in a clearly decisive manner, Tourist is about elegance and soul-searching in one luminous delivery.
Ian D. Hall