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Alison Green, Gig Review. The Cavern Club, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Geoffrey Chaucer neglected to tell one story when penning the grand uncle of English Literature classics, the Tale of Alison Green.

Much debt is owed to The Canterbury Set of musicians who made their mark on certain specific genres over the years, the history of the Kent City, nestling deep as the spiritual home of the country and offering a path to pilgrims over the century and as place which once visited should never be forgotten. Now add all these reasons together and intensify them with a young musician by the name of Alison Green and you have all the ingredients of powerful sonnet or lengthy adoring poem in which the writer would have been proud to have placed somewhere between The Wife of Bath’s Tale and the upstanding Knights Tale.

Alison Green, Gig Review. The Cavern Club, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014. full post

(596 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Fast Camels, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There are times when hearing an album by a band finds you sadly lacking the understanding of what to expect when they play live. There is no substitute for watching the group plough a very individual style and perform incredibly on stage and away from the waking dreams you have as the stereo enacts for its own amusement what it wants you to think on how the gig will go. As the lights dimmed in The Cavern, the expectation in those who had lasted the distance of the late session of music, soared and awoke the reason for many in which to take heart with the Fast Camels.

Fast Camels, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014. full post

(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Kontiki Suite, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 81/2/10

There is a special place surely reserved in anyone’s heart for a band when they play a track that just really just gives the said organ a jolt of undisguised passion, of catching the listener unawares of its importance to them. It can happen a lot with a band that you may have followed for years, it happens less frequently with a group that has not appeared on your in built radar and yet for anyone watching Kontiki Suite in The Cavern Club on a warm Saturday night in May; that feeling of first time love was like lightning hitting the Eiffel Tower and creating a spark so wide it would light up Paris.

Kontiki Suite, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow 2014. full post

(389 words, 1 image, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

The Wellgreen, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow, 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The International Pop Overthrow would be an awful lot poorer if the abundance of great acts north of the dotted line that separates Scotland and England found themselves bereft of a slot or ten inside The Cavern over the seven day period in which the music plays lovingly down the ears of all who attend. In the year in which the key question of Independence for Scotland gathers pace, the music that the nation is proud of producing is still very important to both sides of that in question line.

The Wellgreen, Gig Review. The Cavern, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow, 2014. full post

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

Mark Harrison, The World Outside. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8/10

The soft delicate guitar fused with a the coming out of a serene waking dream and accompanied by a set of vocals that could lull you into believing all is well with the world is perhaps the only way in which to pay respect to Mark Harrison and his new album The World Outside.

Mark Harrison, The World Outside. Album Review. full post

(460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Adam Barnes, The Land, The Sea & Everything Lost Beneath. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The dreaming spires that greeted Adam Barnes’ E.P. Blisters seem to bow in reverence once more as the young musician from Oxford releases his debut album The Land, The Sea & Everything Lost Beneath.  

It is obviously only an analogy, however for anyone who has spent time in the jewel of the South of England or indeed may be only acquainted with the city through watching episodes of Morse, Lewis or Endeavour will realise that apart from the architecture, the scholarly learning and the chance to sip ale in some of the finest public houses in the country, the music world rarely gets a mention  unless it is in the hushed tones of worship at the feet of long since departed composers or in the greater admiration of Radiohead. For Adam Barnes to buck that trend is nothing more than a true delight.

Adam Barnes, The Land, The Sea & Everything Lost Beneath. Album Review. full post

(381 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

The Two Faces Of January, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst, David Warshofsky, Daisy Bevan, Yigit Özsener, Nikos Mavrakis, Prometheus Aleifer, Ozan Tas, Socrates Alafouzos, James Sobol Kelly, Evgenia Dimitropoulou, Omiros Poulakis, Brian Niblett, Mehmet Esen, Pablo Verdejo, Okan Avci, Kosta Kortidis, Karayianni Margaux, Peter Mair.

The Two Faces of January is a film in which the tension, fuelled by the appearances of unrivalled brinkmanship and matchless testosterone, excels. It delves into the culture of violence briefly but that is the point, it is an intelligent enough adaptation to realise that films don’t need to go down the route of overwhelming forceful aggression to make it worth watching. The violence that happens is more through circumstance of two men caught in a trap of their own making and of jealousy. The prize is not just freedom in the end it seems.

The Two Faces Of January, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool. full post

(419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Gemma Bodinetz And Deborah Aydon To Recieve Honour From Liverpool John Moores University.

Everyman and Playhouse Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz and Executive Director Deborah Aydon will receive Honorary Fellowships from Liverpool John Moores University this summer in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the dramatic arts. Also receiving an Honorary Fellowships is Everyman and Playhouse board member Rod Holmes.

Ms. Bodinetz and Ms. Aydon took charge of Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse Theatres in 2003. In that time they have produced 107 plays, creating work that is embedded in its community, such as The Cruel Sea, alongside productions that have enhanced the company’s reputation nationally and internationally such as the world tour of The Caretaker, the return to the city of established stars including Pete Postlethwaite, David Morrissey and Kim Cattrall, while establishing Young Everyman Playhouse which will inspire the next generation of theatre makers.

Gemma Bodinetz And Deborah Aydon To Recieve Honour From Liverpool John Moores University. full post

(615 words, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

Godzilla (2014), Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, CJ Adams, Ken Watanabe, Carson Bolde, Sally Hawkins, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Patrick Sabongui, Jared Keeso, Luc Roderique, James Pizzinato, Catherine Lough Hagguist, Eric Keenleyside, Primo Allon, Ken Yamamura, Hiro Kanagawa, Yuki Morita.

Every generation gets the Godzilla they deserve. The 1990’s debacle starring Matthew Broderick thankfully can now be put to bed as the nightmare it was and audiences in the second decade of the 21st Century can breathe easy knowing they at least have got a monster so cool that it practically makes all other versions somehow seem vastly inferior.

Godzilla (2014), Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool. full post

(696 words, estimated 2:47 mins reading time)

Sons Of Jet, Gig Review. The Cavern Club, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow. 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There must be something in the Merseyside air that draws James Styring back to Liverpool and away from his home in Lincolnshire. The smell of the past, the passion that still seeps out of every pore, every venue and the recapturing of the excitement that gave Liverpool the right to say with pride that it was and always will be the capital of culture, for James Styring and his band Sons Of Jet, that passion is something they capture with their music and the that long loved sound that is forever entwined in the Liverpool air, transfers easily to the flat country fields of Lincolnshire.

Sons Of Jet, Gig Review. The Cavern Club, Liverpool. International Pop Overthrow. 2014. full post

(456 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)