Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You don’t have to go to Yorktown to hit the heights but to record a solo album full of instantly enjoyable songs, of tracks in which pathos, regret and hope go arm in arm and shove with purpose and some undisguised personal violence at the imagery of the past, then perhaps Yorktown Heights is the place in which solitude and rememberance are two adjoining emotions with a clear view of a possible future that lays ahead.

For Grant Nicholas, letting Feeder take a hiatus was possibly the finest thing he could do. In one respect the Welsh group have been a marvel, a lightning conductor in the storm clouds that sometimes gathers around Welsh rock music but whose purpose of reminding the greater world-wide music loving public that there is more to the British Isles than what happens in the confines of the borders and dotted lines of England remains undisputed. Feeder, like the Manic Street Preachers and The Alarm before them have been that energy, now Grant Nicholas has added to the precipitation with a collection of songs in which has to be said shows off his lyrical writing in the same fashion that sudden and unexpected tornado can unearth something new and devastate those not prepared to acknowledge the coming storm.

When some bands take a break from each other it is perhaps with ominous foreboding that the wheels somewhere have come off the juggernaut, that there is nothing to say anymore. There might be a collection of half soaked songs that are released to titillate the faithful but ultimately falls flat like an election promise made in haste.  With Grant Nicholas though, Yorktown Heights doesn’t feel that way, if anything it jumps through hoops like an eager, agile performer at the start of a long career, every hoop executed perfectly, every note scaled and an insight into the mind of one of modern Wales’ favourite Rock sons.

Tracks such as the superb Joan of Arc which hoves into view like a super tanker caught on a tidal wave, the underlying melancholy of Isolation, the lyrical protection afforded Safe In Place, the hammering home of conversations past in Father to Son and the greatness installed in Tall Trees, Robots, Vampires and Broken Resolutions, this is more than a solo album, it is a statement in which the security of living in your own thoughts, of allowing only those who really want to be there with you in spirit to take a peek, is a comforting and at times honestly brutal experience.

Ian D. Hall