Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Often in life the artist only allows you to see what you need to see, you witness the birth, the adolescence, the moments in between, the subtle changes in appreciation as they find their feet, as they delve into the corners of their mind in search of new ways to make the audience laugh, love, weep and feel the pain and joy of existence.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If there is no sense of the immediate in this fast paced world, no look of the instant result or abrupt hook, then it tends to be dismissed, for many people it has no relevance, a word bandied about by those often with no patience or no desire to look beyond their own worlds and experience, the dots not connected, the links not forged, the immediate has become a god of words signifying very little, and in the same way as the phrase “good for the economy” has come to imply that nothing else matters but this ravenous giant, so too does immediate spell the doom for the gentle carousal of building interest to be found in the form of painted imagery.
They tell me that Elvis is dead,
they showed me the carefully
snipped out press cuttings
they had saved since
the dreadful news broke,
back in ’77, every line
preserved, poured over,
taken out every now and then
and the days of tears that follow,
a single one
slowly drifting down the face
when it hurt too much
as I see them close the thumbed
to death, barely hanging on scrapbooks
and draws and bloated cupboards of memorabilia;
floods when the grief of Elvis
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Ask anyone, pick on a stranger, find a friend to converse with down the local, take a trip out to your nearest and dearest and ask them a simple yet illuminating question, take heed of their answer and then go out into the street and ask the same line of enquiry to a thousand others, the startling realisation is that everybody has their own truth, the mantra in which they live by and the devotion to which their serve it.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Whether we like it or not, we are all on a mission, we almost don’t recognise the fact the charge of the vocation placed before us, we don’t realise the simplicity of the exercise in hand, to survive, to spread a sprinkle of joy where we can. To drive the vehicle of our choice, from high speed adrenaline fuelled rocket under the bonnet, ten wheeled drive juggernaut to the sedate feel of our feet touching the very Earth in which we have made our home, taking every moment in, only pausing to salute the bravery and the sheer cool of those who find the iconic Volkswagen Transporter an alluring sight on The Mission Express as offer the listener a moment to be Bathed in Comfort.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If everything was easy, then everybody would be doing it, everybody would have so much going on in their lives that the world would ground to a halt under the weight of simplicity and the uncomplicated.
If everything was easy, then what would be the point of endeavour, of pushing the soul till it reaches what feels like breaking point, there would be no conviction, no sincerity, no belief, art would become meaningless, music would be a devoid of any creative personality, theatre would become a bore. Thankfully it Ain’t Always Easy, thankfully life and the pursuit of passion is full of pitfalls, traps, black holes and the respect due to those that try and often fail, for life, as Stone Broken make clear in the opening track of their new album, is Worth Fighting For.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
An Encounter is all you need in which to see the day, Time, your life, differently, the chance meeting, the overheard information, the prize of attaining something new and exciting and regardless of what Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson may whisper down the monotone years, an encounter doesn’t have to be brief, it doesn’t have to just a passing phase, it can lead quite happily down the road to place where angels lay in eternal blissful wait or where the Music For Voyeurs is an unbroken and irreversible passion.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is the cry of pain that wrestles with experience, the need, the sense of forlorn hope that the person expresses in the act of defiance and denial, the three words Take Me Back are there to remind us that we can never truly capture the feeling that was once deeply ingrained into hearts, seared with a branding iron, stamped with the memory of that we have lost. It is the three words we have all used once in our lives and the ones we remember; perhaps the only time the act of self pity or overwhelming pressure is vocally heard and is meant in its raw and most passionate sense.
I don’t know why
but it got to me
that you didn’t see Terry
before he died.
I knew that you had an issue
with death, you had lived with it,
a day to day companion, an image
in the corner of the room
whenever you thought of a brother,
one not destined to be like you,
vibrant, easy going charm,
a devilish smile, rakish
but with sound heart beating,
but not for the dead,
it got to me because I realised
no matter how close we were
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is no getting away with the fact that despite it being a sprawling metropolis, a virtual criss-crossed labyrinth of villages encircled by the M25 and bound together by a distinction of purpose rather than the natural order of unity, that the songs of London, from its people through to its incredible history, are always worth hearing, especially when they are in the voice of a musician to whom the streets are not paved with the commonplace or the predictable stare of someone who has immersed themselves too deeply in the capital’s attention, but instead one to whom sees and hears the delight of the unaccustomed and the precious.