Category Archives: Music

Natalie McCool, Pins. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Unlike an album which always gave the impression of being an event that was tantalisingly months out of reach, the single seemed to come around with near frightening regularity.

There was a heyday, an apparently glorious period of time which the single was lauded as the high point of the week for many, the chance to go out on a Monday morning, perhaps be late for the first part of school, but knowing the language that spoke from within the seven inch vinyl were engrained much more in your head than the imagined words of fools.

Natalie McCool, Pins. Single Review. full post

(411 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Keith Thompson Band, Snapshot Of Reality. Live Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

If passion is your thing, if it’s the be all and end all and makes the nights hanging by an amplifier, dry ice clinging to your lungs like a wet December fog and a guitar playing a sweet serenade of honest love and toiled emotion, then the Keith Thompson Band’s live album, Snapshot of Reality, is one in which to count the ways in which to adore your love of music.

Keith Thompson Band, Snapshot Of Reality. Live Album Review. full post

(371 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Jones, To The Bone. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The poet, whether armed with guitar, piano and possibly even a generous loving violin or the thunderous confident tones of well oiled and lubricated voice, with expertise is able to take a moment from the past and turn into something that can border on the exquisite, or crushingly, to filled with future optimism that it loses its buoyancy, its grasp on the real and ventures unwittingly into the absurdist fantasy beloved of the broken and bemused.

Jones, To The Bone. Album Review. full post

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

Ian Carr And The Various Artists, Who He? Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Being the main attraction isn’t for everybody. Many are more than happy being the player filling in, the unseen midfielder who puts in more than his fair shift week in, week out, the beautiful scene behind the supposed alluring landscape or the rare flower in the hands of a beautiful woman, some quite rightly prefer it that way. Every so often though that rare flower gets noticed, even if it has been prominently displayed, it may have gone undetected to all but those that rave in the dark of its sanguine effect on the whole.

Ian Carr And The Various Artists, Who He? Album Review. full post

(392 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Venom, From The Very Depths. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Like all good narratives and stories that belong in the realm of darkness, From the Very Depths, is a suggestion that plays into the heart of basic fears, frustrations, doubts and other worldly qualms and the thought of endings as we know them.

It is also the very real place that sees rock bottom being attained and yet for Venom, rock bottom is not an option, it may be a fine starting place for the uninitiated to smile with teeth dripping metal corroded blood but for Venom, this is the point where years of output of across different line-ups becomes important, depths have been reached but a zenith is in sight.

Venom, From The Very Depths. Album Review. full post

(403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Wily Bo Walker And Karena K, A Long Way From Heaven. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are combinations that are just made to make the heart swing that little faster, the amalgamation of seemingly different flavours that somehow go together and produce a slice of unexpected and much admired bliss.

The album may steadfastly proclaim that it’s A Long Way From Heaven, however just an hour in the company of Wily Bo Walker and Karena K and the highly original songs that come across the innocent sounding space between speaker and ear is soon filled with the sweet resonance of angel siding up to a Blues/Jazz combo and uttering the immortal words, “Turn up the heat baby, you’re on fire!”

Wily Bo Walker And Karena K, A Long Way From Heaven. Album Review. full post

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

Sean Webster & The Dead Lines, See It Through. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You can be sat in your armchair, your favourite drink sat by your side, the lights down to an acceptable, undemanding level and with not a care in the world. Then from out of nowhere, an album comes on in a genre heard a thousand time before and the ears prick up, they sense something that they know the brain is going to appreciate and they tell all the other organs to be aware, some serious is going to happen and the only possible solution is to See It Through.

Sean Webster & The Dead Lines, See It Through. Album Review. full post

(512 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Rebecca Downes, Back To The Start. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When you run out of avenues to go down, the only sensible solution is to go Back To The Start and enjoy the initial rush of determined expectancy and play music as if it’s for the first time.

In many a way, that can happen every day when you open your heart to straying beyond the self imposed lines that forever increase as time inexplicably and honestly marches on, none so much more than when a music lover comes across the delightful freshness that comes with a debut album.

Rebecca Downes, Back To The Start. Album Review. full post

(385 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Fall Out Boy, American Beauty/American Psycho. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Virtually all artists bring elements of themselves to their chosen creative pursuit. The sense of the autobiographical is interwoven with in all manner of artistic endeavours, from the artist sentimentally putting in their favourite flower into a scene where there was none to be seen, to the poet adding colour into a dull passage of time and the musician bringing, in some cases the very worst of their dystopian thoughts and nightmarish experiences to the public gaze and letting a guitar mourn the passing of a single note. It worked for bands such as Pink Floyd and solo performers such as Peter Gabriel so why not Fall Out Boy?

Fall Out Boy, American Beauty/American Psycho. Album Review. full post

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

The Waterboys, Modern Blues. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Some fortunate people in this world are just born to deliver poetry to the mass population. Some, no matter what form that poetry should take or whether accompanied by the delicate sound of an acoustic guitar and the wistful nodding of a bespectacled, beard wearing and book loving saxophonist who clicks his fingers between notes, are just put on this Earth to urge others to turn away from a world of bleak impossibilities to a world where a single word in the right place can level mountains and take down Governments.

The Waterboys, Modern Blues. Album Review. full post

(522 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)