Author Archives: admin

Paddy Clegg, Head In The Clouds. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are many reasons in which to enjoy Paddy Clegg’s Head In The Cloud E.P.  Aside from it sounding like a well-oiled Formula One engine, purring with anticipation of the battle ahead and yet creative enough to avoid every pitfall placed before it by those out to do young musicians down, it also has the musical brain musing in what the young man sounds like. Or rather who he sounds like. By the end of the E.P. the dawning realisation of the comparison will explode in the head as if watching a series of Van Gogh paintings come surreally to life; that Paddy Clegg, the young Liverpool lad, has all the early hallmarks of a young, unpolished, unrefined and wonderfully cultured anger hanging in the back of the voice John Lennon.

Paddy Clegg, Head In The Clouds. E.P. Review. full post

(441 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Catch 22, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: * * *

Cast: Daniel Ainsworth, Philip Arditti, Geoff Arnold, Victoria Bewick, Simon Darwen, Michael Hodgson, Liz Kettle, Christopher Price, David Webber.

Joseph Heller adapted his novel Catch 22 for the stage in 1971 and today the script is more or less unchanged. As it is difficult to get the rights to adapt the script, Northern Stage’s director Rachel Chavkin has done what other companies have shied away from, and has put her own mark on this classic war tale.

Catch 22, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(349 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Sue Hedges, Outta Party. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The person who said you cannot do it all, had either never met Liverpool song writer Sue Hedges or was perhaps so embittered by life, that they were doing all they could do to put anybody off trying their best and enjoying fruits of many labours.

Sue Hedges, Outta Party. Album Review. full post

(395 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Devil’s Advocate.

(Man:)  Of course, it is regrettable. There is no doubt about that. The shock waves that rippled around the Palace of Westminster and other Government institutions this week when the news was leaked, unfairly in my opinion, that the Minister in charge of such a high profile department, a department might I add, which had made such sweeping fundamental and necessary cost saving changes to the way it was run, was in fact the illegitimate spawn of Satan. I won’t lie; it was of course a huge blow to morale.

Devil’s Advocate. full post

(423 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Walter Trout, The Blues Came Callin’. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There is a genuine light in the playing of Walter Trout that few can match or even should really be allowed to preoccupy themselves with. The light of a man who plays the Blues knowing he has lived it, not just existed in its shadow but breathed it in, made love with each note running through each finger and thrived in each display of melancholic artistry.

Walter Trout, The Blues Came Callin’. Album Review. full post

(410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Jack Taylor: The Dramatist. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Iain Glen, Nora Jane Noone, Killian Scott, Niall Buggy, Colm Ward, Kathleen Rayner, Aine Ni Mhuiri, Fionn Walton, Michael Burton, Thomas O’ Suilleabhain, Ann Marie Horan, David Murray, Roisin Loughlane, Sonya O’ Donohue, Emma Eliza Regan, Eoin Bourke, John Cronin, Muirann Ryan, Orla Bell.

Jack Taylor: The Dramatist. Television Review. full post

(488 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Fargo: Buridan’s Ass. Episode Six, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 81/2/10

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Oliver Platt, Glen Howerton, Adam Goldberg, Russell Harvard, Joshua Close, Barry Flatman, Rachel Blanchard, Peter Breitmayer, Gary Valentine, Gordon S. Miller, Spencer Drever.

When your back is against the wall, you are capable of many things. In the case of Lester Nygaard, his back is so far against the wall that his shadow is slowly suffocating and franticly using a small hammer to try and dig through to the other side.

Fargo: Buridan’s Ass. Episode Six, Television Review. full post

(423 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Locke & Key: Crown Of Shadows. Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There can be nothing more wonderfully terrifying to the mind than reading something, a classic gothic novel, a piece of macabre inducing poetry or indeed the prosaic style of any of the finest horror writers of the last hundred years, or finding a set of books that just make you squirm with delight with every turn of the page.

For anybody who loves the Graphic Novel, for anybody who the loves horror, Locke & Key is an absolute must and the third in its series, Crown of Shadows, maintains the very high standards that writer Joe Hill and artist extraordinaire Gabriel Rodriguez have thrilled fans with in the previous two books.

Locke & Key: Crown Of Shadows. Graphic Novel Review. full post

(497 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

A Town By The Sea: The Ballad Of David Owen.

The monument of a thousand radio plays

and midnight angry violent arguments in which the host would

invariably

find the stirring spoon such a joyous toy in which to thrill his sterile wife

who listened in to make sure he was really at work,

was barely visible

as David Owen, former prison inmate of a town near Prestatyn,

former, yet not reformed, alcoholic like his father,

former fighter, brawler and unreformed gambler, better, debtor

like his mother and a thief of uneasy time, as well as the odd

A Town By The Sea: The Ballad Of David Owen. full post

(502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Mom, Series One. Television Review. I.T.V.2.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Anna Faris, Allison Janney, Sadie Calvano, Nate Corddry, Matt L. Jones, French Stewart, Spencer Daniels, Mimi Kennedy, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Pollak.

Mom, Series One. Television Review. I.T.V.2. full post

(559 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)