Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Sometimes you just have to sit back and listen to understand a person’s hopes, dreams, desires and fears. The casual conversation in a pub or coffee shop is fraught with dangers of misplaced cues, of half heard personal confessions and the fighting for the best story of the day, to get the true picture one needs look at the person in the face and listen. Whether it is in the form of spoken word or set to music, listening can get straight to the heart of the matter and perhaps makes for better reasoning.
In listening to the beautiful tones of Jonathan Markwood and his album Welcome To Planet Earth, the aural exposure is heightened, it simply states that to sit down an fully take in a person’s life set to music is one of perhaps the greatest pleasures known to humanity. He is not unique, none of truly are really but he is honest, completely and utterly. The truth of his emotions come pouring out like water from a well turned tap, they somehow catch the far off shadow of a fallen rainbow and give a reason in which to appreciate and recognise the potential in all of us.
There are many good reasons in which to get hold of a physical copy of Welcome To Planet Earth, there are also a couple of outstanding incentives as well. The music is detailed; it is timeless and tasteful and sees the musician at his natural best. The songs are delivered with a sense of time, time being a friend rather than a beast snarling away at the back door whose physical prowling can upset the passion in many a recording. This is not a rushed conversation, this is pitched at a near perfect pace and the pleasure is immense.
With songs such as Welcome To Earth (Beautiful Girl), in which you can hear the unspoken acknowledgment to John Lennon wonderfully throughout, the sublime Mary Shelley in which the listener can wallow in the despair of feeling empathy in the great woman’s creation and how lonely such a creation must feel when its architect leaves the realm of fantasy it has started as they realise that it has run its course. There’s also Live Until You Die in which the message is simple, truly listen, truly live, stop messing around and do something amazing and leave a positive reminder of yourself. Welcome To Planet Earth is an album in which Mr. Markwood exemplifies pure and beautiful integrity whilst displaying artistic creativity.
It is always better to listen, you learn so much more that way that trying to talk the loudest, this is how being here on the lonely planet should be. It might be less confusing, it would certainly be a lot more pleasant.
Ian D. Hall