Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
There have been so few solo albums performed by David Gilmour that waiting for one to arrive is akin to finding the winning lottery numbers two weeks on the trot and knowing that you will share that joy with millions of others.
Vanessa Murray sits down at the table inside the F.A.C.T. café, the youthful expression of anxious enquiry and stunned reaction to a new set of songs and what someone may think of them, is both endearing and rather cool. For Vanessa Murray, her debut solo E.P. is one that Time has had a huge hand in, the strength of purpose and will coming together to make a set of songs sound vibrant, exciting, a simmering darkness welded throughout and yet with the beauty and passion flowing throughout.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is a simmering volcano that surely lives in the heart of Jeremy Hardy, a volcano that just wants to burst open and let the clouds of ash, pumice and lava fall where it must and melt what it can. It is a volcano that many would like to see crack open, devour a certain section of the population and then serenely go on biding his time until the next idiot comes along and pokes the genuine joy within to the point where explosions of distaste are vented once more.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, Julian Bleach, Jami Reid-Quarrell, Jemma Redgrave, Jaye Griffiths, Harki Bhambra, Daniel Hoffman-Gill, Joey Price, Benjamin Cawley, Aaron Neil, Clare Higgins, Nicholas Briggs, Kelly Hunter, India Ria Amarteifio, Dasharn Anderson, Stefan Adegbola, Shin-Fei Chen, Lucy Newman-Williams, Demi Papaminas, Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Jonathan Ojinnaka.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal, R.K. Harris, Randall Newsome, Hayley Lovitt, Susan McPhail, John Kap, Alex Van.
Bill Bryson is arguably one of the leading exponents of dramatic and comedic travel writing in the last 50 years, his books have sold millions and they are told as if being let in on series of amusing anecdotes, they veer from the dull and professionally accurate descriptions of a life with a map book in one hand and the inevitable pseudo-snobbish that comes with some of the craft and instead what they become is essential stories of a life well travelled. This is never more perfect than in his best- selling book A Walk In The Woods.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Lydia Wilson, Clive Russell, David Dawson, Josh O’ Connor, Ian McElhinney, Louise Brealey, Anna Burnett, David Wilmot, Leanne Best, Anton Giltrap, Elliot Levey.
The Peace of Edmund Reid is perhaps one that the people of Whitechapel might never have thought might be attained, in real 19th Century London or indeed in the fictional portrayal, made seamless and near perfect by Matthew Macfadyen, yet peace after so much devastation is not so much an impossible ask, it only requires all the circles of Hell to finally close and be seen to banished.
On the day a good man dies,
the memory of your worthless life
is brought into focus
as if the
eye test
you have been putting off
because you know how blind you
have become, confirms your worst fear
and the slow satisfying nod of the optician
as he tells you of the need for two sets
of new and expense ridden glasses, that
memory of the good man’s life is all
you can see…
and the memory burns shame and insignificance
into your eyes.
Tommy Scott at District for Hope Fest 2015. Photograph by Lis Garrett. Photograph used with kind permission by Lis Garrett.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
First night endings are normally off the scale as performers set, perhaps unconsciously, a bar for the weekend to attain and beat. For Tommy Scott at District, deep within the creative belt of the city’s pulsating heart, the applause, the sheer scale of intimacy that the venue bestows and the startling set made sure which ever artist performs at this year’s Hope Fest has a big wall to climb just to even equal this performance.
Jimmy And The Revolvers at District for Hope Fest 2015. Photograph by Lis Garrett. Photograph used with kind permission by Lis Garrett.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There is so much in the heart of Liverpool’s ever growing abundant talent list that for many the thought of never leaving the city, never departing from the sound that comes so naturally to the heartbeat by the Mersey, is one that may be tempting. Of course that would deprive the listener of so much enjoyment from elsewhere, however listening to Jimmy and the Revolvers, it can be seen why that temptation would be whisper sweetly and the sense of lingering musical perfume would entice even the strongest and resistant of hearts into being lured in to the thought.
SisteRay at District, Liverpool. September 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is always that question that burns in the mind in the dead of night, when the lingering thoughts of the after gig nap or playful sleep bounding still with muscles twitching and brain whirring with what should be hopeful received pleasure, the query of, “Where have you been all my life” is one that never gets asked of music and musicians, only ever in the greeting of a first seen attraction.