Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The ordinary and those that are extraordinary, the everyday and uncommon, the heroes that take on the unjust, the one –sided discriminatory and those that revel in the prejudicial and underhanded are all there somewhere within the heart and wonderfully lyrical ballads of Liverpool’s Alun Parry and perhaps never more so in his first album in far too long, When The Sunlight Shines.

There are too few that go out of their way to champion a cause, no matter the right, to stand by the conviction that they hold with pride without the thought of making anything out of it, save to change a few minds along the way and to bring to attention stories, names of the past that deserve holding from the highest pole and who but for the likes of Alun Parry might just get lost in the midst of time and get warped by those that tell other versions. As with Alun Parry’s two previous albums, the stories are there in abundance, the lives of others bought into focus and always with the sincerity in his voice and writing to help the listener question things just that little bit harder.

When The Sunlight Shines looks at the world, not just through Liverpool eyes for which Mr. Parry is well known but seemingly stories that could be transplanted anywhere through time and across every continent in which many wrongs have been done and continue to have an effect on the way we as a society turn a blind eye at times. Whether through the passion of The People’s Midwife, the joy of the message Bring Love, the valuable history lessons of My Name is Dessie Warren and The Dirty Thirty or the beautiful way he takes on songs that could resonate through us all in songs such as Ulysses or the fantastic On The Train From Barcelona in which he provides such art work on a musical canvas that it is possible to believe yourself to be thrust in to the scene of which Mr. Parry paints with quiet excellence.

With contributions from Gina Le Faux, Stuart Thompson, Gabi Monk, the incomparable Vinny Spencer and Barry Briercliffe, Fretful Ged Hannigan, Emma Runswick and Jon Withnall, When The Sunlight Shines shakes the foundations of anyone’s beliefs and gives hope, hope that in the end, the world is just that little bit nicer and less inhuman, less cruel and with a heart that sings.

Ian D. Hall