Cast, Kicking Up The Dust. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The world needs Cast, like other bands from the Liverpool music arena, Cast are indelibly linked to a particular mood, a stream of conscious that cannot be denied or ignored; it is in the Liverpool heart, the acknowledgment that the world outside is rough, often insane and never complimentary to those who pour their heart and soul into making it a little brighter or even kinder. It is in that truth that bands such as Cast become important, because they at least see the rolling majesty and time eroding nature of the River Mersey and suggest that to fight back is the only thing that makes sense, that to be seen Kicking Up The Dust is one thing, what is needed is an actual sandstorm of enlightenment.

Cast, Kicking Up The Dust. Album Review. full post

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

A Punch Line At The End.

She offered me a trip,

a walking holiday through

Yorkshire and Durham,

as it was before they re-arranged the map,

following desolate moorland, and dead feathered friends

whose life had been cut short, and water stout

and fast.

I attribute the offer as folly now,

for we were to stray not far from the river

towards its inevitable end as it lolled

into the North Sea somewhere round Redcar,

Hartlepool and Middleborough,

I should have known that she would lie

to me,

a holiday walking the river,

A Punch Line At The End. full post

(101 words, estimated 24 secs reading time)

Ray Davies, Americana. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Autobiographies are such that the times they are written in often depict how they will be received, the memoirs of a soldier who fought perhaps during a war might be lauded during the aftermath of that conflict but many years down the line might be considered as crass, demeaning or even insulting to the memory of the fallen, on both sides.

Ray Davies, Americana. Album Review. full post

(469 words, 1 image, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Smile. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Kiran L. Dadlani, Mina Anwar, Ralf Little, Kalungi Ssebandeke, Kira Shah, Craig Gardener.

 

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and your likely to have little time left in your life to worry about such matters as emotion, at least that is how it is presented by the excellent Merseyside writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce in the superb second story of the new series of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Smile. Television Review. full post

(453 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Their Finest, Film Review. Picturehouse@ F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Sam Clafin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston, Paul Ritter, Rachael Stirling, Richard E. Grant, Henry Goodman, Jake Lacy, Jeremy Irons, Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Hubert Burton, Claudia Jessie, Stephanie Hyam. Michael Marcus, Gordon Brown, Patrick Gibson, Lily Knight, Francesca Knight, Clive Russell, Cathy Murphy, Emma Cunniffe.

 

It is not always about who has the best and the finest body of men to call upon, the biggest bombs or the most modern equipment that can win a war, it is sometimes, more often than not, about the one individual who can add something a little extra, the one who sees the picture in the theatre of war just a little differently and who can add the element of propaganda to the rallying call of the nation.

Their Finest, Film Review. Picturehouse@ F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(599 words, estimated 2:24 mins reading time)

Every Mother’s Son.

You used to put me on a train

departing New Street Station,

headlong through the day to Plymouth’s safe harbour.

I was safe

because I had you fighting my young battles with me,

and whilst I was not always appreciative

at the time, I never

forgot, I never allowed myself to fail

in your eyes and fought longer and harder

than I should have, just to never see

you disappointed in me.

It didn’t always work,

sometimes

I dishonoured your memory, sometimes I let you down

Every Mother’s Son. full post

(159 words, estimated 38 secs reading time)

The Vicar’s Daughter’s Satanic Ritual With The Dead.

 

Illusion,

always sold as patriotism,

worse still when packaged

and stamped

by the Vicar’s daughter,

caught with her knickers down

and prepared to engage

in necrophilia

with the ghostly offspring of the grocer

and who is on the side

in thought

of a bitch whose mouth betrays

the evil in her heart;

this illusion we engage with

because it suits us, we keep just

on the side on respectability

because to sink further would betray

the fact that we like our two cars,

The Vicar’s Daughter’s Satanic Ritual With The Dead. full post

(154 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Rules Don’t Apply. Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Broderick, Martin Sheen, Hart Bochner, Candice Bergen, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Lily Collins, Steve Coogan, Alec Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Ed Harris, Paul Sorvino, Taissa Farmiga.

The story you don’t know is the one that is often the most factual, cinema has a way of unfolding the tale and only offering the sanitised version of someone’s life, the mistakes, they are erasable, the darkness, the redemption found, the eventual downfall, covered in a semblance of sepia toned grace; for in cinema the Rules Don’t Apply, most of the time they are made up on the spot and changed randomly.

Rules Don’t Apply. Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(441 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Sidelong. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We wait seemingly at the crossroads of history, our engines not exactly revving, our minds certainly not on the road ahead, we are sandwiched between the idea of making it through to other side whilst the other three lanes that have drivers twitching in their seats and reaching down into their saddles bags for a bottle of bourbon, their sidearms and an old wrecked copy of the local A to Z. The landscape being made oblivious to all, and yet somewhere out of nowhere the anger and the passionate are given a home as Sarah Shook & The Disarmers rattle the cages of the ignorant and joins forces with the vulnerable.

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Sidelong. Album Review. full post

(472 words, 1 image, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Vair, A Place In Time. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The thrill of listening is not one that should ever be dismissed as sleight of hand, a trick or an illusion of the senses, each note after all is like a word in a poem, it is fought over, it is a war between what might be perceived as popular and what is right; the politics of movement over the commonly accepted and often unappealingly fashionable.

Vair, A Place In Time. Album Review. full post

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