Category Archives: Music

Bella Hardy: Love Songs. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Love is complicated, if only it were a flawless, if only it was not so fragile, if it were robust and able to heal rather than fracture so easily when the slightest pressure was applied; if only love was tolerant, if it did more than leave you vulnerable and elated at the same time…but then we would have no need for Love Songs, we would have no need for the melancholia, we would have no need for sentimental beauty, the passion of regret, the joy of reconnection.

Larkhall: Say You’re With Me. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Words are meaningless when all you require is understanding, the acknowledgement that someone else is willing to walk beside you in the dark, to have your back when the world turns on you, and to nod solemnly and then, only then do words matter, for in the question posed from your lips, Say You’re With Me, only yes or no will mean the difference between faith and conviction, and only then will you know for sure someone is truly listening.

Chastity Brown: Sing To The Walls. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Perhaps of all the genres of music out there not to suffer a downward sense of appeal in its long and fruitful past across the whole spectrum of lovers of the art, Soul still finds new ways in which to enrapture the feelings of the individual, the ones who listen comfortably for the thousandth time of asking, and those who rarely dip their toe in the waters of anything other than their chosen musical love.

Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler: For All Our Days That Tear Our Heart. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

If you are fortunate enough in life, occasionally you might come across a piece of art that sends delightful and meaningful chills down your spine, the sensation that you are in the presence of a moment that will haunt you, that will leave you scarred, drained of reason, that will push your emotions to the brink of letting go, and then with passion, with sheer will, pull you back, will gladden your soul, and make you understand the intensity, the affection that has swelled the belief that For All Our Days That Tear Our Heart we are left with having lived as all humans should, with truth never have been withheld from us.

Kim Carnie: And So We Gather. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

A soul that’s driven, cannot be tamed.

We have lived, and continue to do so, through times that the once thought Chinese proverb would impel fear into those that were said to be cursed by its very utterance; and yet without those interesting times, how do people become inflamed, inspired, by events so that they may add to the world a beautiful sense of balance. The soul that’s driven to explore, who is not put off or swayed by the prospect of interesting times, pulls the crowds and the belief with them; And So We Gather at the alters and the sanctuaries on offer to praise them.

Rusty Tinder: Alchemy Road. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The struggle, though denied by those with an agenda that borders on narcissism and selfish need, is real. Only the self-absorbed or the ego-driven would look at another’s struggle and be satisfied at the pain etched on the person’s face, only those that cannot understand empathy seek to kick another human being when at their lowest, only those who see nothing wrong with dancing with indifference would deny someone the opportunity to walk along the Alchemy Road and see their life transformed.

Paul Dunbar & The Black Winter Band: Changing Faces. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Faces, like attitudes, like opinions, like life, can change in a heartbeat, we don’t always know what’s coming, what lays in front of us, all we can hope for is that the potholes are avoided, that if the wind alters direction we are not cursed with an expression that can be considered to have turned on the crowd, and instead is open, passionate, fruitful, and above all, ready to offer something of ourselves that is unique, cool, and is utterly, devastatingly, incredible.

Michael McDermott: St. Paul’s Boulevard. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is not just for the preserve of storytellers, to have imagination is a gift that we all should aspire to, if not master, then at least nurture; to bring forth characters from a full pen and make them come alive, allow the scenario of the street to infuse them with a pulse and belief – for by doing so, by painting pictures with words, music, and melody, we can inspire a new world to take shape around us, a world of possibilities that might lead us to the one street, the one road where broken dreams are made whole again.

Asia: Live At The Budokan Tokyo 1983. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

People put a large amount of faith in the consideration of what it means to be iconic; however, they sometimes miss the point that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the most perfect representation of the image that the artist has completed in which to have been placed at the door of the quintessential in which to be loved, adored, found to be an expression of movement.

Rod Picott: Paper Hearts & Broken Arrows. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Storm chasers are often described as mad, often driven by an electricity we cannot fathom, see, or wish to be near, for who in their right mind would suffer nature at her most violent and unpredictable, the trail of Broken Hearts & Broken Arrows that are attached to these acrobats of the natural phenomenon, the hunters of the ephemeral but which carries the long-lasting effect on the Earth it strikes.