Jethro Tull: Thick As A Brick. 50th Anniversary Reissue.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Written as a response to the music press as the seminal album Aqualung was still deep in the minds of the listener, Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick is considered by many as the ultimate concept recording, and whilst fans and advocates of Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway or Pink Floyd’s The Wall might disagree with loud, and argumentative vocal voices, there can be no argument that what the members of the band put together in 1972 has resonated, found its way into folk lore, has become, in a word, legendary.

Jethro Tull: Thick As A Brick. 50th Anniversary Reissue. full post

(489 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Suspect. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: James Nesbitt, Imogen King, Sacha Dhawan, Sam Heughan, Antonia Thomas, Richard E. Grant, Joely Richardson, Niamh Algar, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Miller, Tabitha Green, Adam Kiani, Adele Marie, Alexander F. James.

Originality is a scarce commodity, and even then, the chances are it has been done before, but that doesn’t stop the belief that what you are witnessing is a novel approach to an age-old problem, that of how to entertain, educate, and inform, whilst keeping the attention of the one who has invested their time in your product, in your story.

Suspect. Television Review. full post

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

Dynasty: Final Advent. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We all make that final journey, be it a spiritual encounter when the breath is short, or the reckoning we have with our past, a final moment in the shade of our decisions, at dusk’s closing eye, we make the last moment count.

Dynasty: Final Advent. Album Review. full post

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

When Rivers Meet: The Flying Free Tour Live. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We don’t perhaps appreciate enough the facility and ease of modern technology that allows us to still to be able to believe in the power of being there, that we can in part spend time perhaps with our favourite artists via a world of the unhindered view and the less than appreciative interloper readied with a supply of drinks and inane, loud conversation.

When Rivers Meet: The Flying Free Tour Live. Album Review. full post

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

Rusty Shackle: Under A Bloodshot Moon. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The view from Under A Bloodshot Moon can often be more enlightening than that which illuminates brightly or even that which surprises in a Blue Moon serenade. It is the colour of reveal and rebellion, the phase of Earth’s satellite that conjures up images of war, of revolution, and sometimes, the warning of pleasure taken too seriously, and when that image is focused upon the desire to be taken in by the art on show is overwhelming and full of promise and delivery.

Rusty Shackle: Under A Bloodshot Moon. Album Review. full post

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

Grace: Looking Dead Good. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: John Simm, Amit Shah, Christina Chong, Craig Parkinson, James Tarpey, Kristy Philipps, Richie Campbell, Michael D. Xavier, Mitchell Hunt, Alex Price, Cassie Clare, Rakie Ayola, Owen Roberts, Sidney Kean, Sally Edwards, Laura Elphinstone, William Andrews, Brad Morrison, Henry Miller, Callum Coates, Steven Elder, Darren Tighe, Matt Barkley, Boo Golding, Lauren O’Neil, Nicholas Khan, Adrian Rawlings, Louis Boyer, Austin Hardiman, Robyn Ashwood, Katie Brayben, James Barriscale.

Grace: Looking Dead Good. Television Review. full post

(503 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Grace: Dead Man’s Footsteps. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: John Simm, Craig Parkinson, James D’Arcy, Zoë Tapper, Richie Campbell, Laura Elphinstone, Brad Morrison, Rakie Ayola, Dave Lynn, Katie Clarkson-Hill, Caolina Valdés, Margot Leicester, Michael Bertenshaw, Jake Fairbrother, Alexander Cobb, Clare Calbraith, Steven Hartley, Elizabeth Rider, Brian Pettifer, Amy Conachan, Nick Warnford.

Grace: Dead Man’s Footsteps. Television Review. full post

(464 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Joe Pug: Nation Of Heat -Revisited. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We should be grateful that we live in a time when the word mulligan can represent more than just a do over in a round of golf between friends.

An artist’s vision is to be respected, enjoyed, to be seen as the ultimate authority in the world they have created on canvas, in the darkness of the lonely hours afforded the writer as they gaze at the blankness of the screen and the pressure of bills mounting at their door, how they must envy the poet whose scribblings are never truly finished.

Joe Pug: Nation Of Heat -Revisited. Album Review. full post

(519 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

History Of Guns: Forever Dying In Your Eyes. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

It’s that look you see when something you held on for, lets you go. Whether it is a group, a belief, a person, a parade of ideas that once could have changed the world, or just the simple remains of humanity, it is the knowledge that as you stare into the pupils of the one who matters most that you see them Forever Dying In Your Eyes.

History Of Guns: Forever Dying In Your Eyes. Album Review. full post

(406 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

From On High they Swoop.

White beaked Messerschmitts

take vantage position

on the decaying church roof

as they crowd and wait

with piercing eyes

the early morning frenzy

of laid down black bags

the parcel corpses of the bread,

too far gone for morphine,

and they attack on mass.

The streets are filled with caw bullets

sprayed

and laughed by brains

so small

these creatures of the air,

and yet they know

our habits,

From On High they Swoop. full post

(143 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)