Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

There are times when to hold back your emotions and perhaps even your stringent, occasionally narrow, mind and let in a music argument that night not have been on your mind when you go into a venue. You might go in expecting one thing but then the support kicks in and you are left with a further belief attached to your many quivers and multitudes of bows.

For The All, the sound they produce is one of an unusual quality, a starkness which is endearing and coming so far out of left field that if donned an Everton kit and yet banged in a hat trick every week for Liverpool at Anfield nobody would be more surprised.

The All, Ariel, Emily and Dave, truly live up to their name as they give themselves, musical warts and all to the audience inside District. This is not your usual musical trio, this is not a set of musicians in which to take liberties with, for underneath the playful, experimental, atmospherically and unfaltering band lays the beating heart of a proud animal stalking its prey. It may be uncertain of what that prey will do when it sees the beast corner it, like the mythical Squonk, it may lay down and pretend to dissolve into tears and then run for all its might in the more natural waters of musical need that is in abundance in Liverpool; or it might just embrace it and find it intriguing enough to let it be played with a ball of wool in the paws of a tame but easily roused tiger.

Listening to The All, it’s actually easier to let the tones and mood waft you somewhere else, for Ariel, Emily and Dave have got the obscurely driven covered and it sounds interesting and distinctively appealing.

With a set which included Goblin Fruit, Uncle Alice, Outsider, Sweet Tooth, and Regiment, the ground work has been firmly laid by The All. They are not the finished article; they certainly need something to fill in the small gaps that echo tangibly and exotically around but they are certainly a band to enjoy watching blossom as they grow. The All are a tempting proposition, worthy of being led down a different route and one that has allure written into their D.N.A.

Ian D. Hall