Elbow in Liverpool 2014. Photograph by Mr. Darren Moore.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
For many inside the Liverpool Echo Arena it may well have been the first opportunity to see Elbow in such a setting. The enormous roofed space in which has held so many great concerts since it first opened its doors to the public in 2008 now reverberated and swayed to the atmospheric delights employed by Elbow.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is always a small part of you that worries that the second E.P. or album you hear performed by a band might see the glimmer of undisguised joy you felt first time round, die a little, become somehow tarnished and smeared with the dirty pain of blotted memories. It is a natural thought. Even when a band has been going many years that nagging doubt remains and in even in masters of the music experience such as Pink Floyd there is an argument for saying A Momentary Lapse of Reason falls into that category. For Liverpool band The Vibes, a couple of E.P.s down the line and they still sound bloody marvellous. Dust Trail proves that you perhaps shouldn’t give much thinking room for second E.P. nerves!
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
“If it ain’t got that swing then it don’t mean a thing…” If it’s not The Fresh Dixie Project, then whatever it could be is an obvious pale imitation of something so right that deep down you know you could be headed for booking up confession sessions a few months in advance. Failing that you will be listening to five young lads give such an imaginative display on the scale of seeing an exhibition of a man swagger and swerve temptation as he strides along Oxford Street with a thousand pounds in his pocket and defying expectation, passes into the hands of a local homeless woman.
Bright blue sky day far from home
Met an experimental performance poet
Who likes to say words that rhyme with ‘an’
And make tiny sculptures from the wire cages
That hold corks onto champagne bottles
Swapped our books by a sunlit forest waterfall
Something mutual and unsaid in that
More than the gift of words on paper
Wandered around a secret Elizabethan garden
Clipped formal hedges and geometric forms
Collected a handful of fallen rose petals
Crushed in my hand they smelled like heaven
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
No matter what you think of the subject matter to found within Cody McCarver’s latest soul bearing offering, The Lord’s Will, there can be no denying that musically it is a great listen. Regardless of what your views on religion are, your views on certain aspects of faith and conviction are; what devotion you may bring to the table in offer, there are at times moments in life when to hear somebody pour their heart into producing something so delicate can be a little humbling. Whether you believe in a power beyond your recognition is not up for debate but you sometimes do have to listen to somebody else view or way of life to understand that your own particular road is not seen the same from even those you may call friends or lovers.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Tony Bennett, Hugh Bonneville, Sean Combs, Jermaine Clement, Rob Couddry, Mackenzie Crook, Celine Dion, Dexter Fletcher, Lady Gaga, Zach Galifianakis, Josh Groban, Salma Hayek, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hollander, Toby Jones, Frank Langella, Ray Liotta, Ross Lynch, James McAvoy, Chloë Grace Moretz, Usher Raymond, Miranda Richardson, Saoirse Ronan, Til Schweiger, Russell Tovey, Danny Trejo, Stanley Tucci, Christoph Waltz
Voice artists: Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Peter Linz, Louise Gold.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
The graphic novel/ film/television tie-in has had many great reasons in which to celebrate multi-media crossover in the last couple of decades. From Sin City to The Watchmen, from V For Vendetta to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, each has carried the other with the weight of heavy expectation foaming from its pages or celluloid extravagance. When it comes to the world of Marvel, arguably the heaviest hitter in the world of the comic book communities, the films have been great, the comics have been superb but the tie-ins have not been so enamouring.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Eithne Browne, Paul Broughton, Stephen Fletcher, Jessica Guise, Colin Hoult, Adam Search, Angela Simms, Michael Starke.
St Jude’s Primary School has been placed into Special Measures, the universal, one size fits all term, to denote that somewhere something is not right with the system.
When Tory M.P. Thomas Winters feels the wrath of the P.M.s anger at being hit by a croquet mallet in a particularly painful constituency, he is dispatched to tick the right sort of boxes in a North of England school and make amends. The fall out, the so called oppressed kicking downwards is not new but for the Head Master and staff of St. Jude’s the fall of basic humility and understanding looking them in the eyes is one that is too much to bear.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Not everything in life needs to be shouted, screamed at the pace of a jet fighter roaring over an oil field with soldiers protecting the peace underneath or the rush and exhilaration of a football championship decider. Not everything needs the roar, sometimes the quietest word can grip hold of life more eloquently than the damnation of a thousand rhetoric speeches of hate can ever achieve.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The healthy resonance of a guitar is sometimes the only sound you need to hear to understand in how every instant the world can be both beautiful and devastatingly sad at the same time. For Robert Cray that singular echo coming through the airwaves is one that haunts, chills and pleases from opening track till the time when The C.D. has been placed regretfully back onto the rack. His latest album In My Soul is no different.