Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Even the hardest of working souls need to feel the warmth on their face and the pleasure of company, the friends that tell them they have made a difference to the world, the ones that smile without fear when the recipient of the compliment declares with open heart and mind, “I Found The Sun Again“.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
These are times of illusion, confusion and stagnation, everything is moving at a pace of change in the way the daily slog dares not imagine, the sense of disproportion is damaging. For these are Dark Daze, staggering shock, constant calls for clarity, and ones for the poets to search out their own reasons to dispel the coming storm, to add a voice of harmony so that the clouds roll on past and that evaporate, like bad dreams, in the emerging sun.
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We are urged to try, and if we should fail, to try again, the experience somehow making us more immune to the sense of impending defeat or bitter loss that we feel in our hearts. Like Robert the Bruce, the sense of history weighs upon us by observing the courage of one who inspires with their actions and fortitude, and the oohs and ahhs of those behind us who appreciate the attempt but never quite understand the anxiety and pressure of wanting to believe that a Nice Try should count for something more than pity.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The Way Back To You is one that the adventurer and the lover will often talk passionately of, but rarely undertake, knowing full well that what lies in wait is more than just temptation or the rekindling of a former affection, but also regret, one steeped perhaps in loss and recriminations; and it is in the end only the seeker of forgiveness, of the story teller, and the poet, that The Way Back To You becomes apparent, it is one of open ended compassion, of acceptance, a few fruitful lines in which to woo life and love as equal partners.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
With The Changing Light, we see things in a way that either more appealing, or at least different, our perspective altered to the point where the dusk is illuminating, where the ruby brightness is blinding, where the transformation is to embraced.
Following up from his 2017 album Lamp Black, the Edinburgh based musician Richard Haswell returns to the fore to deliver an album that, whilst written and recorded during the ensuing social health storm of 2020, actually finds the space to ensue and proactively promote a sense of freedom, an embracing of frank expression. It is to this beauty in which the sound encompasses with inquisitive non-conformity, a burst of energy full of candour and colour.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Even in the midst of dark times, it seems that poetry and poetic feeling are easy targets for others to decry, to shame it somehow as an expression of the uncomplicated and the effortless, to suggest that the tones meant to deliver comfort in extraordinary times are shallow, eager to please and drowning in their own contented juices. Such talk is not just a heresy against communication, it is an illustration of contempt for anyone daring to think of anything other toeing the perceived line, that the artist means nothing in a world of sour grapes and misinformation.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The yearning to be our own master is such that we look forward to the day when we become able to make our own decisions without considering other people’s opinions or advice; and yet we lose something vitally important in our rush to leave behind our Childhood Soul, we losethe belief in the small details, we forgo the chance to revel in having nothing more complex to choose than what breakfast cereal we wish to delve into or what superhero we want to wear on our underwear.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The paint laid down during 2020 may have begun to dry, but that doesn’t mean the building work is finished, if anything 2021 will see the Wisconsin born and southwest raised Peggy James take further action in her affirming project, in building another story to which her house of ideas and music can be sheltered from the storms, and to which can be seen as a positive influence by all who venture through her front door, who seek change and positivity in a world Hell-bent on self-destruction.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We live in interesting times, that perhaps is a curse, a sign that we have taken so much for granted, that we have forgotten that hope is there to provide comfort, not illusion, not the sense of seeing life as a desire to have it all, but to be content with what we have, and learn that what walks away was perhaps never meant to be.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The pedestal to which one of the Godfathers of British Pop has always been levered up to a point where he has become, not through his own design, a musical idol that is untouchable, a human being to whom the narrative has often been inscribed by others that he cannot do wrong, that all he put before the audience works. It is upon this grand pedestal that Paul McCartney has been put, the humble drive and beautiful spark of musicianship and humanity has almost, like the other members of The Beatles, been encased in gold, not allowed to corrode, to show fragility or the odd blemish in the studio.