Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For the masses this side of the Atlantic, West Virginia is perhaps a remanent of the old romantic notion of what the United States of America was once a representation of, a state carved out of its own seceded ideals from something larger and because it wanted its own vision, its truth to be plain and easily forged. Like the revolution guns that started on Boston Common and the and the anger of tax imposed by a grander authority, what West Virginia means to those who live without this purpose cannot be easily defined but the music that holds the beauty together is one of unshakable cool and distinct authority.

Kate MacLeod’s Mind The Gap delves into that romance, echoing perhaps in ways to the late John Denver and his observation of the state, and yet striving forward, pushing the elegance, the simplicity, the sense of history of separation, and the union between a person and their place in nature and the brutality of being forgotten in the mountains of the Appalachian folklore and country roads. 

The debut recording from the band, Home Brewed, is one that sees the impeccable Ms. MacLeod join forces with Paul Hammerton, John Bryant, and Matthew Metz as the reverential and timeless quality of the songs not only shines through but is not afraid to feel the earth beneath the fingernails, to praise the sky and the mountains, but to acknowledge voraciously, patiently, the very soil tilled by humanity and protected by nature.

Inspired in part by the Shenandoah Valley, the historic landscapes, and the people who inhabit the homes and saw the decline of industry once forged by the woods and forests themselves, Home Brewed is an album of constant pleasure.

Across tracks such as the openers, I Will Sing My Heart Out and Cross-Eyed Fiddler/Denver Belle, the blissful tone of Never Looked So Good To Me, the ode to its birthplace in Good Old Virginia, and the finale of The Old Charles Town Pike, the creative sense of union between players is blessed with honesty, sincere vision, and a grasp of the immortal, that no matter what those Appalachian mountains, the very ground stood upon by generations of humans and their beating hearts, will still be standing long after we forgo our right to be here.  

Home Brewed is alluring and dynamic, but in the pulse of its very creation it stands authentically bound to the soil and the truth that stands aloft.

Ian D. Hall