Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The instrumental album is one that in many ways can carry more weight with the listener than any other particular style on offer; perhaps in part due to the musician or band allowing the freedom of thought to really take hold and flourish, permitted with grace to soar higher than those albums stuck rigid in their lyrical excellence.
Who would be an icon in 2016
when Time suggests you have had your Time
upon this Earth, making people
laugh, sing, think and knowing
they have had some privilege of sparkling
nobility shine in their lives,
for it turns out that 2016 was just a murdering
git in heavy disguise as a year,
the black mask covering the demonic glee
of celebrity assassination as the poor,
genuine 2016 is locked in a basement somewhere
in Munich, no access to the news
and only given bowls of water
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is a world into which darkness, the thrill of dusk and the shadows that fall in between is not something to be concerned with, rather it is to be celebrated and allowed to grow strength in the act of consummation; it is knowing that the dark is not only infested by the escaped shadows from the realms of light, it is a place of glory into which dreams can be made; like hearing the words of passengers crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, sometimes you have to Listen To California to appreciate life.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The planet and its inhabitants are not just mostly water, they rely on it, poison it, drink it and consume it; it is almost the ultimate in self cannibalism; drop by drop, sea by sea and Ocean By Ocean, we are awash with the truth of life and yet so few actually feel how open we have to be with ourselves to ever feel clean.
Flashback;
It was what you gave me
as I turned on my phone
to see your remark
on another person’s page.
Ignoring my own held advice,
that I don’t have the right
to ever know
what other people think of me,
I read the short snappy sentence,
primed like a grenade,
three second rule blast
which tore my heart in two
and my head blown
to pieces on the rocks of someone
else’s insecurity, jealousy
a spread eagled whore
who likes to spread her
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10
People forget just how much America is a country that is arguably divided between its own extremes, of the huge and imposing cities that dominate the East and West Coasts, the mega towers that lay in between and the heartlands, the ranges and flatlands that can only look upwards and onwards with either envious eyes or more frankly with pity. It is the extremes, the separation in wealth, poverty, attitude and political alienation that drives the country to its position of dominance and its ability to give music of most genres the fair crack of the whip; after all such diversity will always throw up new heroes to worship and Kentucky is always wild about a new hero.
I used to think you were just a mean drunk,
a man who at the end
of the long arduous night
would pop open a tin
of cheap
nasty liquor
and sink them in order,
cans one
through to eventual six
and then to whom resentment
at the world, the sign of the angry
Capitalist, the dead on sarcasm boiled
in rich memory
of having been shafted by the poor,
the meagre and the deprived…
in your greedy eyes,
in your hard-up soul
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is often surprising when music appears out of seemingly nowhere and the entrancing sound that follows the discovery is almost akin to tracing the White Nile to its source and finding that the waters are intrinsically linked forever to The Tweed; music and water are universal, they both play the same song in the hearts of humanity.
For Paul Chamberlain and Michael Haywood, their debut album First Impression is one in which to savour the joy of discovery that the accordion, saxophone, violin and clarinet not only sit together well as they dance upon the knife edge of innovation but they can produce such uplifting and gregarious beauty as it flows along the entire recording.
Muse in Glasgow, April 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You cannot fault the effort that Muse put into their show, the production values are simply out of this world, the sound magnificent and the extras that make it always worth attending one of their performances just something to behold with slight awe. What can let it down as you watch the whole evening unfold is when the audience don’t seem to want to join in the fun and the absolute pleasure until very late in the day; the odd mosh pit opening aside, until the old storming favourite of Time Is Running Out presented itself to the crowd, there was hardly a peep of mass voice joining in.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Wonderfully outspoken and a glorious acid wit, bundled together to make a woman of keen verbal desire; it’s possible that you might find many such outrageously verbose and sincerely talkative people on the comedy circuit but there are few like Katherine Ryan, there are even less that truly grab you by the short and undeniably curly in such a way as the comedienne from Sarnia in Canada.