Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

Pedigree and genetics is possibly not the first phrase that might pop into your head first thing in the morning, unless of course you have been up all night worrying about your judgement at the latest round of Crufts. However, it a useful comment to remember when thinking of the sublime talent that lives and breathes with every sinew straining to break loose as you listen to the new E.P from Mo Evans, the scintillating and inspiring Spilled My Love.

The E.P. is as near perfect as could be hoped for. It has that aura of once played you know the day is somehow different, lighter, filled with something inexplicable and tangible, something that just knows the day is going to be enjoyed.

Unless you are fully aware of the artist, you may have followed a particular band all their recording lives or taken stock of everything that ever happens inside a recording studio, surely a physical impossibility the more people that hanker such desires in an ever-increasing population, then the chances of coming across something new dropping through your door. They are perhaps the same as being shoved over Niagara Falls in a barrel and finding a silver service tea being served and an exotic film being laid on for you as you crawl out unharmed from the unbroken barrel and with a million pounds stashed in your back pocket.

Unlike a generation ago when music was flicked though in tray upon tray, perhaps only being stalled over if an album or single suddenly become relevant to the collection or if had cover art so enamouring that it didn’t matter what it sounded like it just had to go home with you, now the internet tells you all about the artist before you have had chance to listen to a single song. Unless you avoid it, unless you are determined to understand the emotion that sneaks through the speakers first before the enquiring modern mind lets loose on hitting the letters on the keyboard, then the surprise is spoiled.

For Mo Evans, the music is truly exquisite. The four songs sit so comfortably in the soul that the only true surprise is that they don’t pull up an armchair, look you in the eye and drink your last tin of beer whilst switching over the channel on the television.

The songs, Spilled My Love, Close My Eyes, Can’t Come Any Closer and You Wanted Love all have that very special quality in which you finally understand that pedigree and the past, whilst always deferring to being someone’s own person, play a huge part in the world and the music it skips along to.

With  deference to the songs as a whole, part melancholic, part wrapped in a symbol of titanic fury but covered fully in astounding, breathtaking quality, the music as a whole is delivered by the grandson of the great Joe Brown and the son of the even finer Sam Brown with deftness, maturity and absolute stunning conviction.

Spilled My Love is a huge contender for E.P. of the year, one that comes out of nowhere but one that revels in its unmasking.

Ian D. Hall