Category Archives: Music

Y Kant Tori Read, 25th Anniversary Retrospective.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

When Genesis released their debut album, From Genesis to Revelation, the sales it received could have seen any of the labels that were around at the end of the 1960s keep the band at arms-length until they split up and left them bitter and forlorn musicians. Thankfully they were given time, their music given the space to find its own special way in the world. Roll on 20 years and the young Tori Amos, the woman who would go onto become of the biggest female acts of all time, was about to suffer the same fate with her debut album as part of the band with the same name, Y Kant Tori Read.

Y Kant Tori Read, 25th Anniversary Retrospective. full post

(806 words, estimated 3:13 mins reading time)

Ashbury Keys, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Going back to the beginning of a band’s career can seem sometimes as if you are resurrecting a forgotten beast that’s been left to graze on green pastures for too long. In groups that have been part of your life seemingly forever, it’s a chance to wallow in glories, of half remembered gigs that you attended before they struck it big and the cost of going to see them became too expensive as more and more corporate claws wormed their way into the soul of the band. The music is a memory of mates long since buried or who have fallen by the way side as you move away promising to write but never quite finding the right time or the right words to tell them.

Ashbury Keys, Album Review. full post

(482 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Melic, Nowhere I’d Rather Be. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If ever there was a group of musicians that you found out had played in the city you live in within a few weeks of receiving their debut E.P. from 2012, the decidedly catchy and intolerably superb Nowhere I’d Rather Be, then Melic from London is such a band.

Melic, Nowhere I’d Rather Be. E.P. Review. full post

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

The Beat Movement, The Warning. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It may be an old adage but the music that played a huge part in defining the latter half of the 1960s is a gift that keeps giving with size ten boots, smartly dressed in crisp suits and a movement that refuses to lie down and take it easy as it approaches middle age. The Mod age that was captured so sweetly and wonderfully by the distinct sound of groups The Who, The Smoke, The Kinks and The Small Faces continues to live, breathe fire and spread its wings over each generation that follows in its wake.

The Beat Movement, The Warning. E.P. Review. full post

(333 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

I Am A Man With A St. Tropez Tan, Just A Ghost. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

There can be no messing round when being avant-garde, it either works so well that it becomes a fashion all of its own or it leaves people so stumped that it can leave those taking part as the audience cold and bored. Thankfully boredom is not an option and not on the agenda when it comes to I Am Just A Man With A St. Tropez Tan.

I Am A Man With A St. Tropez Tan, Just A Ghost. Album Review. full post

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

Susan Hedges, City Song. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

If Susan Hedges showed her teeth and bared her claws throughout the excellent Kiss My Attitude album then on the City Song E.P. the hurt she put out for all to hear is replaced by one of sensitivity, poetry for something, someone she loves and a joy of a place she is deeply proud to be part of.

Susan Hedges, City Song. E.P. Review. full post

(309 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

Cavern Records Presents The Best In New Music, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In the 1980s a brand new way of presenting music as a package appeared, the then much loved Now That’s What I Call Music collection which featured artists and groups such as Phil Collins, Heaven 17, Malcolm McClaren, The Human League and Simple Minds made its first appearance 30 years ago. In that three decades music has moved on, young musicians have made their way onto the scene and nowhere it seems is that energy more keenly felt in the U.K. than in the home of music, Liverpool.

Cavern Records Presents The Best In New Music, Album Review. full post

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

Susan Hedges, Kiss My Attitude. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To meet Susan Hedges is to admire her. To listen to her remarkable voice on her album Kiss My Attitude is to understand that admiration is one thing, but to recognise and fully appreciate the driving force that pushes this extraordinary woman to make such great music, music that is tinged and immersed fully with depth and a burning anger.

Susan Hedges, Kiss My Attitude. Album Review. full post

(340 words, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)

Jackpot Donnie, Mayday. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For many in the U.K. the American city of Chicago either conjures up the idea of some of the television programmes or films that feature the tremendous beauty and sometimes grimy underworld that the city is built upon, the band for which wonderful rock ballads were seemingly entrusted to for the best part of two decades and with Peter Cetera at the helm made the band a global phenomenon or possibly even the thought of Renee Zellweger and Welsh actor Catherine-Zeta Jones vamping it up as two women on death-row in Cook County Jail in the sensational musical Chicago.

Jackpot Donnie, Mayday. E.P. Review. full post

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

Lee And The Lovedaddies. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is the yin and yang of music, the great trying to be better in either form. For some bands, trying to capture the sound the studio has afforded them, the well polished, buffered and clean finished article that may have had months in the making can never be truly captured in its live form. The animal is too different, there can be no retakes, no second, third or fourth different tries to get the note just right, it is do or die on the night.

Lee And The Lovedaddies. Album Review. full post

(306 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)