The Wombats, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We are only human after all, we see the world not in black and white but in an armada of colours, almost psychedelic, almost in a state of flux somewhere between utter panic and soulful serenity; to think otherwise is to deny ourselves one of the basic fundamentals of existence, that when look into the eyes of strangers, of those we see every day, and even the constant weave of those we fancy, take a shine too or just daydream about, we know deep down that the Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life.

The Wombats, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. Album Review. full post

(449 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Mitch Woods: Friends Along The Way. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Somewhere up past New York City’s 77th Street, digging deep into the Harlem past and roundabout cool, there is a place in which the Blues can be heard to be more than a memory, more than being a place in which the lure of the quick and easy buck can nestle alongside reminisce and virtue. Somewhere in the deep heart of New York’s five boroughs is still the sound of piano driving home the call to the San Francisco coast and the Mississippi heartlands of the put upon working class, that Blues is still a God to reckoned with, that Mitch Woods is still one of the purveyors of the sad lament and truthful bible and with the help of Friends Along The Way, the sound never will diminish in its importance and heart breaking purity.

Mitch Woods: Friends Along The Way. Album Review. full post

(510 words, 1 image, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

Ducking Punches, Alamort. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In the end addiction will get the better of you, even in the comforting tones of art, for in striving for more, to reach the high that comes with the laudable and the attained pleasure, the chemicals in the brain will tell you that it can always be pursued, that tiredness can be overcome with positive thoughts, a different diet, exercise, taking the advice of the desperate for attention and the ones who hold a pointed gun at your temple.

Ducking Punches, Alamort. Album Review. full post

(448 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Endeavour: Cartouche. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Anton Lesser, Sara Vickers, Sean Rigby, Dakota Blue Richards, James Bradshaw, Caroline O’ Neill, Phil Daniels, Donald Sumpter, Emma Rigby, Linette Beaumont, Abby Wilson, Iain Stuart Robertson, Christopher Sciueref, Ray Polhill, Alan David, John McAndrew, Simon Dutton, Luke Hornsby, Sophia Capasso, Pano Masti, Alister Hawke, David Shaw Parker, Lewis Peek, Robin Weaver, Betty Denville, Michael Levi Harris, Mark Arden, Steven Flynn, Christian J. Parkinson, Billy Rowlands.

Endeavour: Cartouche. Television Review. full post

(564 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Still Open All Hours, Series Four. Television Review. (2018).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Jason, James Baxter, Stephanie Cole, Tim Healy, Maggie Ollerenshaw, Johnny Vegas, Brigit Forsyth, Kulvinder Ghir, Sally Lindsay, Nina Wadia, Geoffrey Whitehead.

Natural progression in comedy is essential, especially on television where the day to day unravelling is far more illuminating than quick fire and often mistimed, it is perhaps the modern label though of gentle, or worse, wholesome, comedy that makes people avoid programmes such as Still Open All Hours; and by doing so the television viewer is missing out on the established acting range that is the product of honing dedicated skills in theatre and on television which has not been written by committee.

Still Open All Hours, Series Four. Television Review. (2018). full post

(526 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Paul Carrack, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. (2018).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Paul Carrack at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, February 2018. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Unless you are part of the esteemed Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, you don’t see that many musicians performing a two night stand at the prestigious venue; it isn’t that it is not the done thing, it just happens that way, performers take to the stage, they give the audience the respect they are due and the harmony of expression and hopeful love, then they move onto the next town, perhaps only stopping to take a look at the city in daylight hours, rekindling a memory of their own before the bus and their equipment drives on.

Paul Carrack, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. (2018). full post

(543 words, 1 image, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Grainne Duffy, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

When you witness a musician completely stun an audience with an awe-inspiring, almost transcendent, reading of an Etta James classic, then you know you are in the presence of someone who, if Time decrees, will take the hearts and minds of crowds to come that they might never have thought possible. That in this otherwise night of a sort of second homecoming for the main event of Sheffield’s Paul Carrack to a favourite venue in a city he obviously loves, that Ireland’s Grainne Duffy would come into the lives of the Liverpool audience and simply blow them away with her charm, depth and voice.

Grainne Duffy, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. full post

(390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Dead And Breathing, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Lizan Mitchell, Kim Tatum.

Aside from yourself and your loved ones  being healthy and happy, all that you can ever hope for in life is either being part of history, having your name linked to the times you live and have your name roll off the extensive tongue as if attached to a medieval proclamation, complete with booming voice reading out your virtues and perhaps a heroic deed or two; or seeing history made, knowing you were alive when the Earth shattering, the amazing or the downright incredible happened and perhaps seeing someone else have their moment in your company…being witness to the most awesome of performances.

Dead And Breathing, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(423 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

The Mercy. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Forth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewlis, Mark Gatiss, Andrew Buchan, Finn Elliot, Jonathan Bailey, Ken Stott, Adrian Schiller, Sam Hoare, Kit Conner, Eleanor Stagg, Simon McBurney.

There is a fine line between the hopeless romantic adventurer and the lie told in which to preserve the memory of what you set out to achieve; it is a line so thin that you cannot but help pity and remorse for those left behind to pick up the pieces of the notion and want of derring-do and you cannot help but feel the blur of admiration that strikes home, the sense of forlorn hope that cannot but be helped be seen as glorious failure and which makes the most interesting of stories.

The Mercy. Film Review. full post

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

On The News Of An Engagement.

 

There will always be happiness

to be found in the announcement

of love, it is the way of things,

we fulfil a need to see life

continue, to see it flourish

and avoid the rain

that some would bring just

by their presence; you cannot beat

the feeling of love and it is to be happy,

to be thrilled, when it happens to you.

Love, you are lucky my son,

you have found the one to hold

and admire, to care for

On The News Of An Engagement. full post

(123 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)