The Waterboys, Modern Blues. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Some fortunate people in this world are just born to deliver poetry to the mass population. Some, no matter what form that poetry should take or whether accompanied by the delicate sound of an acoustic guitar and the wistful nodding of a bespectacled, beard wearing and book loving saxophonist who clicks his fingers between notes, are just put on this Earth to urge others to turn away from a world of bleak impossibilities to a world where a single word in the right place can level mountains and take down Governments.

The Waterboys, Modern Blues. Album Review. full post

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

The Eichmann Show, Television Review.

Cast: Martin Freeman, Anthony LaPaglia, Vaidotas Martinaitis, Samuel West, Nicholas Woodeson, Rebecca Front, Andy Nyman, Ben Addis, Caroline Bartlett, Ed Birch, Zora Bishop, Dylan Edwards, Nathaniel Gleed, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Soloman Mousley, Anna-Louise Plowman, Ian Porter, Justin Salinger,

There are moments in history that have damned us as a species. No century, no civilisation, not one era is innocent of spilling bloodshed, but nothing perhaps can touch the 20th Century for the sheer desecration of humanity and the blood of so many children.

The Eichmann Show, Television Review. full post

(502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Generational

Every generation believes it be the last greatest one that will walk the Earth.

The final ones to shoulder the standard before a shadow falls on Empire

and weeds start to grow beneath humanity’s feet,

and weave their way silently to the fatted necks

slung low by the weight of unrealistic expectation.

 

We are kept in check by the ghosts of grandparents and their memories,

we understand the mistakes they made, the unexpected dances

they waltzed on generation’s passed and the now forgotten graves

that sit row upon row like stone guards awaiting a presidential cavalcade

Generational full post

(327 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Jago and Litefoot: Jago In Love. Series Four Box Set Audio Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Louise Jameson, Conrad Asquith, Lisa Bowerman, Elizabeth Counsell, Matt Addis, Christopher Beeny, Mike Grady, Colin Baker.

After the final events of Series Three’s Chronoclasm, it would be understandable if Jago and Litefoot, Victorian London’s pre-eminent Detectives, were to think of taking it easy for a while. The nerves shattered, the lives of those around them changed and their long standing friendship with Leela pushed to a limit which thankfully did not break, who would blame them for getting back to the normality of London life?

Jago and Litefoot: Jago In Love. Series Four Box Set Audio Review. full post

(576 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

Dawn Landes & The Kentuckians, Covers E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The love of Americana and the thought the abundance of wide open spaces that are filled with historical beauty, destruction, free thought and in some extreme cases, regretfully closed minds, all make America an appealing place in which to praise the ability of song writing.

The American dream, the chance to improve your lot in life and its downfall when the intensity of its politics bites with severity, is one that provides the thought of a lyric and offers redemption, a softness to the hammer blow when it goes wrong.

Dawn Landes & The Kentuckians, Covers E.P. Review. full post

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

Broadchurch, Television Review. Series Two, Episode Three.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: David Tennant, Olivia Coleman, Jodie Whittaker, Andrew Buchan, Charlotte Rampling, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Arthur Darvill, Eve Myles, James D’ Arcy, Meera Syal, Caroline Pickles, Jonathan Bailey, Tanya Franks, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, William Andrews, Charlotte Latimer, Steve Bennett, Amanda Drew, Eliza Newbury, Pippa Gillespie, Andrew Darlington, Margery Knight, Neil Stanley, Abigail Hardingham, Stephanie Clift.

Courtroom dramas are the stuff of legends when it comes to television. The after effects and fall out of the police investigation just as riveting as the methodical way in which the case is built up from the start by the detective.

Broadchurch, Television Review. Series Two, Episode Three. full post

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

Frenemy.

Sometimes your most hated enemy, the person

who makes you sick the most,

the one you would trust with absolute certainty

to piss you off more than any other…

is the one that will hold your hand at the end.

 

For years they stuck the knife in whenever possible

and dismissed your name with the ease of a

camel drawing breath or the ferocity of a kitten

with aspirations and desires to be a lion in charge of a pack…

and yet they will mop your burning brow as you slip away.

Frenemy. full post

(151 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

Fables: Homelands. Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

What do fables do when nobody is thinking of them? It’s pretty much the same for anybody that walks the planet sometimes feeling alone and un-thought of, if they don’t wallow in a pit of despair, they can get up to mischief or they can become a hero.

Fables: Homelands. Graphic Novel Review. full post

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

Southern Tenant Folk Union, The Chuck Norris Project. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

For many a music fan, the concept album is like allowing the lengthy attention span required for a drive down the back roads of Britain from John O’ Groats to Lands End via Whitby to enjoy the gothic ambiance and a day or two in Stratford to soak up the atmosphere of a greatest of them all and the master of the concept ideal.

Southern Tenant Folk Union, The Chuck Norris Project. Album Review. full post

(402 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Alan Kelly Gang, The Last Bell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Solidarity is not always achieved when disparate forces come together, even if the final purpose is the same; it somehow can seem fractured and split and in the end only half the aspirations and goals are met.  This is not the case with the hugely impressive and direct new album from the Alan Kelly Gang, The Last Bell. If anything, more goals are met with extraordinary cheer than if the forthcoming General Election was being fought with a fairness in the media and all prospective members of Parliament were told that their pay was to be reduced to that of nurses.

Alan Kelly Gang, The Last Bell. Album Review. full post

(369 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)