Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You can be sat in your armchair, your favourite drink sat by your side, the lights down to an acceptable, undemanding level and with not a care in the world. Then from out of nowhere, an album comes on in a genre heard a thousand time before and the ears prick up, they sense something that they know the brain is going to appreciate and they tell all the other organs to be aware, some serious is going to happen and the only possible solution is to See It Through.

For Sean Webster & The Dead Lines, serious is the by-word for class, a man who is gifted with the voice of others and yet retains his own individuality, his own way of expressing lament and grief, to vocally weep and be able to mourn Time and its effects on the human condition.

See It Through harks back to an age when the likes of the much missed Joe Cocker would use their voice in such a way that it was an instrument of choice. The voice is nearly always the selling point to a song or a piece of music, but in Joe Cocker and in Sean Webster, it is something else, it is man-made mechanism, the soul of the articulate communication; it can carry the words without a note being played and you remember it for that quality.

That’s not to say that the alum is only about Sean Webster, for it certainly isn’t. Throughout tracks such The Mayor, Stay With Me, Heart Still Bleeds and the album title track, See It Through, the music is impeccable and yet simple. There is no need for hysterics, no place for fancy work to embellish and unnecessarily decorate, all that is required is the straightforward purity on offer and the result is just effortless beauty.

Arguably the stand-out song on the album is one that is nestled deep within the tracklisting, the bruising, demanding, both physically and mentally, earnest plea of I’d Rather Go Blind. It’s heartfelt passion of a love that’s begun to sour in one part of the relationship and how it is seen from the other side.

The question of jealousy, of undiscovered resentment, of suspicion of the lost love’s motives and the perhaps resigned bargaining of wishing something worse upon yourself than see the inevitable happen. It is a song that grabs the listener’s thoughts and hones them into asking if they would ever do the same.  In a world that asks much of understanding and tolerance, it is sometimes easy to overlook the pain that one person can go through by their own damning words. I’d Rather Go Blind addresses that and the gut wrenching finale echoes and reverberates across the time of the relationship.

See It Through is a great album by a man who understands how to make a music fan listen without questioning the motives of each song. Pure, honest and reliable, some albums are meant to be that good.

Ian D. Hall