Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The vagaries of youth demand that we all look at the possibility of reaching a certain age as an almost impossibility, not denying the time spent on Earth, but the vents of frustration and niggles of pains that go hand in hand with it; it is the fine act of human balance called into question where with age comes wisdom but also arthritic knees, bad backs, and a host of other issues to which the user will complain, but to which with a smile and a song in the heart will explain that “I’d Rather Be Older (Than Dead)”.

Ahead of the new album release next February, Gone To Flowers, Amy Hopwood traverses the fine line between joyful response and sage advice to that defining question of life as an older person and the alternative, how we respond to such insights of how the human soul, forever eternal in one form, when the name and the memory of what was is still forever spoken by tongues that never met the individual, and that to which it is encased in, the vulnerabilities of the evolving and wear torn body.

It is, with the glorious assistance of a tremendously enthused audience who attended her show at the Wessex Folk Festival in May this year that the song bounds with an echo that might never have been captured in the studio; the addition of choruses with the unlimited potential of voice in the background finds a sense of togetherness than raises a smile on the listener’s face and refuses the soul time to feel loss or loneliness.

I’d Rather Be Older (Than Dead) is not a list of complaints of how age shapes our mind, it is instead a celebration of life, the reminder, no matter how painful that the world is better for us being part of it, that we can harmony with the best no matter how much everything may twinge or sting, that is our duty to sing along no matter how old we get.

A song that deserves huge compliments, Amy Hopwood once more uses her voice and musicianship for the betterment of the audience’s soul.

Ian D. Hall