Originally published by L.S. Media. August 21st 2009.

Alun Parry’s new offering is wonderfully titled We Can Make The World Stop and for a while whilst listening, it really seems as though we can. From start to finish the whole album is delightfully crafted, well written and excellently sung.

The opening track and the album title shows perfectly from the start how Alun perceives the injustices within society as he observes that they have got the money but never worked a railway line or drove a bus. The feeling of solidarity pervades through the whole album but there are some songs that hold a mirror up to the cracks that have spread through society.

The hauntingly beautiful Waiting for the Lovers perfectly sums this up as Alun writes about the evil of homophobia and how some people behave when they feel their masculinity threatened by other people’s love.

In the quirky but none the less interesting Princess Deborah, Alun shows his wit off perfectly as he talks about his love for an online queen and how she is more fruity than a slot machine.

The song that really shows Alun’s Liverpool heritage is the first-rate John Lennon’s said. This song has it all and even sounds as if it could have been written around the time of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper or White Album phase. There aren’t that many songs that can contain such famous or infamous names as Kissinger, Pol Pot, Mahatma Ghandi and Noam Chomski within its lyrics.

A splendid album that deserves to be listened to and played regularly.

 

Ian D. Hall