Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Time is perhaps the greatest commodity that Humanity possesses; no other creature on the Earth feels its passing in the same way, by the ticking of the arbitrary clock, the machine that allots how you live between the tick and the tock and how you use up your designated heartbeats. Every other creature goes by nature, Humanity goes by the well-oiled spring and the belief that Time is to be conquered, you either use it productively or find that at some point life has gotten so far away from you that it has swallowed whole by the numbers imprinted on the clock.

For Shane Beales and his latest E.P., Time, productivity, imagination and a love of what you do is at the heart of this very cool E.P. The tragedy of time is that it is never truly your friend; it sits beside you and toys with your affections for certain people and places, for moments lost in the ether and never to be recaptured. Shane Beales and Time sees this and the four songs on offer, Blackbird, Signals, Time and P R S M what is shown is the grace in which to use Time as a way of leaving regret behind. You can sing about it all you want, discuss it till the cows hitch up their tents, put out the camp fire and wander back into their sheds to be milked  over a fine cigar and the promise of a late night skinny dip but the pain of the moment is never the same as when you originally feel it.

For Shane Beales, a man who has lived and breathed in the air of towns, cities, countryside retreats and studied in the heart of English culture of Liverpool, Time is a bountiful expression in which few can chase, in which only a select limited number even see a glimpse of. For Shane Beales though, the feeling is that Time has seen him and liked what it saw. The songs cover the emotional void felt by many, regret eating them away till the shell is as barren as the soul that used to sit playfully within.

Time, it seems is a very good place in which place your trust.

Ian D. Hall