Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The reminder of folly is never too far away from the people of the South coast town of Brighton minds as they are reminded each day of the beauty of the sea that washes over the pebbled beach and threatens on a bad day to take the boats moored up towards the wall that hugs the front and its sense of back alley history, the Pavilion that gives a sense of opulence to a place that is amongst the salt of the Earth and home to some great music.
There is nothing plain about Brighton, it is a mecca of wandering imagination, of focused thought and perhaps the place that is in many ways like Liverpool, a city of allowed divergent thought, where everything can go hand in hand and yet undisguised bluntness of the tongue when somebody comes along to knock it. It is home to The Levellers and many other great bands and now one in the shape of three piece group Stark has come along to spread the word of the town and the people that reside in the home by the sea.
The great sandbag of musical talent that pervades from the streets in which Pinkie Browne took on an Empire and lost comes together in Stark and their album Stories from the Underground. Six songs of generous arrangement in which Jamie Francis, Evan Carson and Josh “Rusty” Franklin make music seem fresh and exciting whilst the nods to musicians such as Lyndsey Buckingham hang in the air like a seagull caught in a crosswind and surveying the Channel below.
Tracks such as Lets All Fall Down Together, the bountiful excess of Ghost and Ball and Chain make the album such a simple unembellished pleasure that it would be impossible to hold anything but a sneaking respect for what the band has put together. The fusion of Blues and Rock, of the neat tie in to Progressive and the natural urge of the story-teller all combine to make something very special, something definite and distinct and wonderful as taking a slow walk across the pebbles that make up the front of Brighton and with the memory of a thousand nights on the pier forever etched in stone.
An album of sheer grit and determination!
Ian D. Hall