Category Archives: Music

Jo Bywater, Chasing Tales. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Earlier in the year, Jo Bywater started thinking about recording more music once again. It has been just over two years since she released her astonishing debut album Cycle Grace Pulse Break and every day since then has seemed a little greyer. There has been the wonderful surprise gig in which to catch her at and relish in the way her songs nurse your psyche but with any decent performer, what the heart yearns for is new songs in which to enjoy and to know they are still actively in love with what they do.

Jo Bywater, Chasing Tales. E.P. Review. full post

(445 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Sammy Hagar, Sammy Hagar & Friends. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

After four decades thrilling fans and audiences alike as one of the great American rock entertainers, Sammy Hagar has recorded new tracks and put a Hagar-like slant on a couple of absolute towering monsters  in which the devotees and aficionados will be knocking themselves out for to have as part of the collection. After great and deserved success with bands such as the enormous fantastic Chickenfoot and the iconic Van Halen, Sammy Hagar & Friends relishes in the man’s ability and undoubted charisma to showcase that even now he is still one of the top draws of rock’s glittering establishment.

Sammy Hagar, Sammy Hagar & Friends. Album Review. full post

(510 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

A Lovely War, Ezra. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Everybody starts somewhere, the great and the good, the seemingly indestructible icons of stage, cinema and music and everyday walk of life. Everybody has a back story, the fledgling beginnings which in time show how, in this case the group of musicians, took themselves on from humble beginnings and with perspiration, dogged determination and age can be sensational. Such is the proposition facing A Lovely War and the quirky, certainly enjoyable E.P. Ezra.

A Lovely War, Ezra. E.P. Review. full post

(338 words, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)

Jonny Lang, Fight For My Soul. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Some albums jump straight out at you from the opening note and make you sit down in almost startled amazement. In Jonny Lang’s first album for seven years, the tormenting and incredible sound that encapsulates Fight For My Soul, the feeling of bewildered admiration is compounded by thought of time having passed by.

Jonny Lang, Fight For My Soul. Album Review. full post

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

Mojo Makers, Wait Till The Morning. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The comparisons that will inevitably follow when Wait Till The Morning, the new album by the superb Mojo Makers, is released or even perhaps unleashed would be a better term with anything that the Midland’s own Led Zeppelin recorded should be disregarded  and put away as early as possible. Not for the reason that many might think, those that believe the genre stopped being of any significance when Led Zeppelin stopped making new music, but for the fact that in Wail Till The Morning is far and away more interesting a caged animal than almost anything the Midland band put together.

Mojo Makers, Wait Till The Morning. Album Review. full post

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

Thomas McConnell, Worried About Thomas McConnell. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Worried About Thomas McConnell? On the evidence of his E.P., you really shouldn’t be as the young man with verve, style and the sweetness of attitude has produced four songs that typify the resilience of the young talented artists, musicians and people in everyday life to make their voice heard.

Thomas McConnell, Worried About Thomas McConnell. E.P. Review. full post

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

Annihilator, Feast. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Time moves on and the brilliance of a band that came to the forefront of their country’s contribution to the Heavy Metal/Thrash genre seems to have finally come to a stuttering halt and whilst not completely disintegrating into fragments just yet, the signs are ominously there. For Annihilator and Jeff Waters in particular, the premiere of Canadian Metal, the band that bought out some illuminating and defining classics in their time, have bought out their 14th studio album, Feast, and it is regretfully anything but.

Annihilator, Feast. Album Review. full post

(443 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Metallica, …And Justice For All. 25th Anniversary Retrospective.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Four albums in and Metallica confirmed their place as the world’s biggest Metal band with the release of …And Justice For All. As years in music go, 1988 was a phenomenal year for Heavy Metal of any sub-genre, Iron Maiden had released the superb Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Queensryche had raised the bar to a new height with the epic Operation Mindcrime and Megadeth showed what was to come in the form of the interesting So Far, So Good…So What. …And Justice For All was the best of all worlds, the fusion of Progressive, the barbed sterile lyric feel in which the music reigned supreme and despite the incredible loss of Cliff Burton, the band were able to top the brilliance of the previous album Master of Puppets and give their audience perhaps arguably the finest album of their career. Out of such adversity facing the band with the loss of the superb Cliff Burton came the outstanding entrance of bassist Jason Newsted.

Metallica, …And Justice For All. 25th Anniversary Retrospective. full post

(1209 words, estimated 4:50 mins reading time)

The Last Scout. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When a band puts out an E.P. or album that has the flash of inspiration attached to it by supplementing the musical aura with a touch of mystique, the ears tend to get just a little more excited and the brain digs just that little bit harder to understand what makes the group and the music tick. With The Last Scout layering secretive messages from the start with the sound of a pre-Second World War radio drama broadcast in which the idea of courage and making a stand is paramount, the E.P. brims with clever vocals and music which bounces along in a way that is reminiscent to the way that the much underrated Yorkshire band Dead Like Harry sounded.

The Last Scout. E.P. Review. full post

(311 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

Mike Zito & The Wheel. Gone To Texas. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The concept of confessional poetry isn’t a new one, especially in The United States where it flourished under auspicious talent, weighty hearts and minds that saw the acknowledgment of their craft being greeted as an affirmation of genuine skill and endeavour. As Mike Zito readily admits; his new album with The Wheel, the brutally honest and gorgeous Gone To Texas, is an album in which he pays homage to the Lone Star State, the state that he says saved his life. It might not be in the same vein as poetic luminaries such as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath or Allen Ginsberg but the sentiment is there, this is a musician shaking his soul loose and willingly, ungrudgingly revealing all.

Mike Zito & The Wheel. Gone To Texas. Album Review. full post

(365 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)