Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is far harder to give away half your heart than to tear the entire beating beast from its crevice. Half a heart can still care, it can still desire and function, it just feels the pain and loss of that it was separated from with more intensity than if the heart stopped with the sudden force of being slammed into obscurity and the unfeeling.

For the songs that Allison Lupton provides on her new album, Half My Heart, the sense of loss, grief and rememberance come flooding through and announces itself with disarming charm and melancholic beauty. The songs require deep thought and empathy to the situations that the various heroines find themselves in and it sits with a quiet contemplation that is far beyond what anybody could expect of music of such introspection and graphic coloured imagery.

In recent years, great strides have been made to highlight women’s personal stories, especially in the modern era but scratch beneath the surface, go underneath the possible positive platitudes made and there stands tales and personal accounts that have been swept under the ever growing carpet, only retold in quiet hushed corners to descendents and the social historians.

For Allison Lupton though, the way she conveys these stories is paramount to understanding, or if indeed knowledge is already known then the more that comes out, the greater the appreciation of what certain times and patriarch society order allowed means in the scheme of the modern day hangover from a blighted Victorian society.

Tracks such as the brutally sensitive album track Half My Heart, Lichtbob’s Lassie, Wooden Ships and the fantastic Over The Ocean to Canada all garner empathy towards plight and sympathy for the way sections of society were treated in search of a better life for themselves. Half My Heart is the stand out track in what is a very cool and excellent album; its sheer abundant honesty drags such dark stories out the cave and into the thoughts of the modern listener. It is simply addictive and forthright and with musicians such as Ian Bell, Andrew Collins, Denis Rondeau and Tom Leighton giving all to the overall feel of despondent truth and unwavering sense of duty to stories that could be forgotten.

Half My Heart is a master class in song writing from an exceptional story telling.

Ian D. Hall