Category Archives: Music

Stone Temple Pilots With Chester Bennington, High Rise. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

The structure and power is unmistakable. The deft tones and swirling highs of a guitar being treated with the respect it deserves and with a thump of the drums keeping time with the listener’s heart are all there struggling to be unleashed on a the music lover who surely knows what they are going to get when the Stone Temple Pilots rears their musical heads.

The vocals though are something different, something new and might leave the listener wondering if the debut E.P. for Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington, High Rise is really the right direction for the rock group.

Stone Temple Pilots With Chester Bennington, High Rise. E.P. Review. full post

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

Ron Sayer Jr and Charlotte Joyce, Hard To Please. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are albums which are just so seamless in their presentation that the listener can only imagine that the premium tailor in the country stitched it together with the finest deluxe invisible silk. Ron Sayer Jr.’s and Charlotte Joyce’s album Hard To Please fits that description so well that the outstanding guitar that Ron Sayer Jr. employs may as well be considered the sharp needle which weaves the notes together and then embroiders the beautiful voice Charlotte Joyce within in its sumptuous  tapestry.

Ron Sayer Jr and Charlotte Joyce, Hard To Please. Album Review. full post

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

Babajack, Running Man. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There will always be one album that catches you unawares. No matter how many you manage to listen to in a week, occasionally something will ping in the back of the brain and you will sit down, disregard everything else that is going on and needs to be done and just sit mesmerised by the sound of the incredible, the stark reality of beauty that squeezes itself out of your stereo. Babajack have that in abundance on their latest album Running Man. Ignore the phone, make sure no one knocks on the door demanding to know if you are free for a drink, Running Man is much more important than any almost anything else you can be doing right now.

Babajack, Running Man. Album Review. full post

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

Genesis, Genesis. 30th Anniversary Retrospective.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

When it comes to Genesis, the rich tapestry of the band which started out from Charterhouse Public School and ended up as one of the biggest Progressive Rock groups ever, doesn’t neatly divide fans one way or the other in terms of musical values in certain eras, it manages to do it during the course of an album as well.

Genesis, Genesis. 30th Anniversary Retrospective. full post

(933 words, estimated 3:44 mins reading time)

Malik & Pettite. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

The Midlands city of Coventry isn’t really remembered for many things outside of its Cathedral, the legendary Lady Godiva the fantastic groups The Specials and The Selecter, being the home town of the poet Philip Larkin, the utter devastation it suffered in the Blitz and one brief shining moment for its football club in 1987 where the team did the unexpected and pulled off one of the most famous victories in F.A. Cup Final history.

Malik & Pettite. E.P. Review. full post

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

Haim, Days Are Gone. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Days Are Gone is the debut album by Los Angeles Rock band Haim and with the soothing whisper of an ethereal essence, the three sisters introduce themselves onto a public that should be ready to take them to their hearts.

Haim, Days Are Gone. Album Review. full post

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

Vinyl Floor, Peninsula. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

If there is one genre of music that Britain seems to continually well at creating, then surely Progressive Rock is the one. Unlike Metal, straight rock and pop has had the good fortune of having continental and Scandinavian Europe come along and show the way forward to British bands, Prog though still remains very much in the hands of a certain type of musician and for that the joy of hearing Denmark’s Vinyl Floor’s Peninsula is greatly appreciated.

Vinyl Floor, Peninsula. Album Review. full post

(417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back/ And I’ll Scratch Yours. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When Peter Gabriel released Scratch My Back in 2010, cover versions performed by an artist, which normally has the feel of creativity poverty and a terrible aching of lack of substance, was turned on its head and given fresh, bold and enjoyable lease of life.

The original idea for artists to return the favour and put as much spin as they could on the gabrielesque lyrics may have taken longer than the project intended but time is something that never seems to worry the man who has thrilled generations of fans over and over again. What matters is the final product, the accumulation of ideas and threads into one neat and absorbing packaging. Now Scratch My Back has its companion, the excellent and rightly titled And I’ll Scratch Yours. 

Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back/ And I’ll Scratch Yours. Album Review. full post

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

Alun Parry, When The Sunlight Shines. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The ordinary and those that are extraordinary, the everyday and uncommon, the heroes that take on the unjust, the one –sided discriminatory and those that revel in the prejudicial and underhanded are all there somewhere within the heart and wonderfully lyrical ballads of Liverpool’s Alun Parry and perhaps never more so in his first album in far too long, When The Sunlight Shines.

Alun Parry, When The Sunlight Shines. Album Review. full post

(416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Manic Street Preachers, Rewind The Film. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Rage and anger are very frustrating animals, in some it becomes lost in a rant that is fuelled by jealousy and is unattractive to see portrayed or seen. In many though the anger grinds under the surface, its reflection on society growing until the bubble bursts and comes pouring out, not in a diatribe of mixed, sometimes reactionary anguish but in a form of social belief, quiet fury that is softly spoken and carrying perhaps the biggest sack of wrath. For fury and change never seems to be misplaced in the anger of a patient man.

Manic Street Preachers, Rewind The Film. Album Review. full post

(439 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)