Category Archives: Music

Sue Harding: Darkling. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Nowhere in England perhaps encompasses the feeling of open beauty, of revealed fables and secret language as that of the West Country. Its accent, the sometimes-insular belief and its welcoming arms can keep the confidential close to its heart whilst allowing the rest of England to view its soul with astonishment and grudging respect.

There is nothing vague or ill-defined about the life and heartbeat of the West Country, its music, its art, its belief, and the measured darkness, is blunt in its delivery, even with the voice that carries kindness and trustworthy approach, and it is because of the darkling, the ambiguous that becomes more entrenched the further you investigate its inner shores.

Sue Harding: Darkling. Album Review. full post

(422 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Monica Taylor: Trains, Rivers & Trails. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In celebration and commemoration, that is how the marking of time is meant to show how much we care about an event, or indeed the human spirit that may have created or been instrumental in its happening.

Surrounding herself with the appreciation and insight of the American sage of Woody Guthrie on what would have been his 110th birthday, Monica Taylor, The Cimarron Songbird brings her own stories of ‘dirt roads, home, fence posts and trains’ to the fore in the haunting and yet fulsome new album, Trains, Rivers & Trails.

Monica Taylor: Trains, Rivers & Trails. Album Review. full post

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

Ed Harcourt: Monochrome To Colour. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The sense of reveal that is to be found when a person is presented with a picture of the past that has been taken in black and white, and that in which the hues and shades have been colourised are obviously jaw dropping. The spectacle of the monochromatic and its mood of silence, of era’s framed by coal dust and darkness, given life, given purpose in memory is startling, and yet both serve the photograph voyeur with meaning and with passion.

Ed Harcourt: Monochrome To Colour. Album Review. full post

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

Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado: Navigation Blues. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To be called prolific is normally reserved by those who are unsure on how to best describe the mountain of extraordinary work put in by an artist, the writer, the musician who keeps the style intact across volumes of their own imagination, their own fierce stamp on the world, for to be called prolific is both a sense of admiration, and a side swipe, what would be a finer and more desirable term is high volume creativity, or in the case of Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado, inexhaustible excellence.

Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado: Navigation Blues. Album Review. full post

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

Siskin: Flight Paths. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Even in solitude we must endeavour to believe in contribution, for the lonely pursuit requires a meeting of minds somewhere along the path, whether from the sibling looking on in awe and wonder, or that person whose heart you have touched with just a simple anecdote elongated to create a tale so incredible that they live to hear it retold again; solitude may be the big bang of creation, but it means nothing unless someone is on the same Flight Paths as you.

Siskin: Flight Paths. Album Review. full post

(364 words, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Ryan Traster: Low Mirada. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We learn about different cultures, history, and geography is different ways, some from behind a desk cramming their brains with knowledge from books, periodicals and appropriate university-backed journals; others find that the simple act of following any sports team is enough to acquire the knowledge of a city, a town, and its people. Yet it is arguably only through travelling, of actually putting your soul into the world that we can honestly say we have seen the nooks and crannies, we have walked upon roads that now dead civilisations have trodden upon, we have breathed the same air as heroes and villains alike that have inhabited high office and low life bars alike…it is the place of the Low Mirada, where self-incrimination is more of a persuasive admittance that we have places and locations always on our minds.

Ryan Traster: Low Mirada. Album Review. full post

(419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Paul Heaton + Jacqui Abbott: Manchester Calling. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There was a time when Manchester spoke that the world would listen with intensity, and whilst that sense of exposure has somewhat dissipated in recent times, those heady days when The Hacienda would bellow, when Oasis would rage on stage at Maine Road, when the roar of a Georgi Kinkladze mazy run was assured the calls of encore in much the same vein as Black Grape as they strutted their monumental character on stage are but a memory.

Paul Heaton + Jacqui Abbott: Manchester Calling. Album Review. full post

(433 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Revival Black: Under The Light. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Step in line or stand out, and though the hypocrites and demanders will see the latter as a form of self-indulgence they can’t wait to knock and bring down, the fact is that Under The Light of examination, under the spotlight of consideration and analysis, the worthy, the brilliant, the exceptional, will always stand out and be looked upon as the revival of a period which they themselves have been inspired by; and thought upon as those without shadow, without equal.

Revival Black: Under The Light. Album Review. full post

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

Muse: Will Of The People. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Arguably there has never been a time in British history when the Will Of The People has been more under threat, where every gain made, every step taken forward in the name of progress of equality and rights has been not slowly or gradually removed, but systematically and swiftly desecrated, a bonfire of the backbone, a funeral pyre of the resolve which now poses the risk of inflaming the natural ambivalence handed down by generations into a national conflict; and they are not just to blame, but the will of the people is as well…for we have allowed this to happen.

Muse: Will Of The People. Album Review. full post

(477 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)