Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Earlier in the year, Jo Bywater started thinking about recording more music once again. It has been just over two years since she released her astonishing debut album Cycle Grace Pulse Break and every day since then has seemed a little greyer. There has been the wonderful surprise gig in which to catch her at and relish in the way her songs nurse your psyche but with any decent performer, what the heart yearns for is new songs in which to enjoy and to know they are still actively in love with what they do.
With a couple of tracks making their way out into the brave world in some form via the internet, the palpitations started gathering pace and with promises being whispered that come September those songs would be released, smiles at the thought were broadened.
September arrives and after the most enjoyable summer weather wise for nearly forty years, Jo Bywater has more than kept her word with the E.P release of Chasing Tales. The Yorkshire born but very much part of the ever flourishing acoustic scene in Liverpool, has always played with a great sense of maturity, an ear for the rhythmic and an ability to place words in such a way that the guitar is more than an instrument to her, it is more like a confidant, a co-conspirator in her music and Chasing Tales once exemplifies this confident and genuinely very cool woman’s ability.
E.P.s can be strange things. One step up from the old 45 inch single, for those of a certain age and who remember them with warmth, they gave you a small peak into the mind of the band or artist but never the whole picture that an album afforded. E.P.s stretch that window into the artist’s soul just enough to make what you hear fascinating but it leaves the listener wanting more, to understand if they can what the musician is trying to say to them. Jo Bywater’s Chasing Tales gives the listener more than a peak, it gives a full blown procession and whether the song Chopping Wood, the humbling Sun Shines Under Water, This Garden or the excellent Woollen Hearts, to hear the guitar bending to Jo’s softly spoken will, to hear the lyrics that a poet would be proud to their own is sensuous, deliberately straining at the leash too really let loose and above all, fantastic.
Chasing Tales is released on the 27th September
Jo Bywater is performing Chasing Tales at the official E.P. release at the View 2 Gallery for Liverpool Acoustic on the 27th September.
Ian D. Hall