Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
They are one of the most uniquely sounding bands to come out of the twin musical areas of Liverpool and Birmingham for some time but even then it doesn’t guarantee that a new album will have anything the intensity or the overflowing amount of passion that their debut or any of their abundant gigs have had.
In Stealing Sheep’s Not Real, the eagerness and sincerity that the threesome had since they burst onto the scene in Liverpool, that overwhelming thought of prosperous beauty is still there but something has changed, something intangible has crept in and stolen the absolute purity of sound first heard in Into The Diamond Sun. The expression is there, the beauty remains but it has become distorted, filtered and stepped into the shade as if taking on the musical equivalent of Miss Haversham, the cake that was cut and which spilled forth such grace, has become, like Miss Haversham, somewhat unpalatable in places.
It is always hard, near impossible to wonder where some bands take a different turn, it happens to all, none are immune, no artist is immune from offering something in which great joy should be felt but in the end the feeling of indifference comes riding out the block and finishes the course long before any hint of pleasure can be seeing mounting its unwieldy steed.
It does take time for some tracks to present themselves in a way that made Stealing Sheep such a thrill, such an absolute joy to hear during Into The Diamond Sun. Time though is fickle and in the modern age, whilst in retrospect an album can take on the mantle of quietly disposed classic, time is not always kind, it can bleed and annoy, it can punish and in the case of music can lead to an album being un-played and sparsely thought of for more than Time can allow.
The tracks that do capture the imagination seem to appear towards the album’s conclusion, almost as if the vibe, the muse being sought only appeared as Time relented and forced the issue along. Sunk, Love and the killer She all resound with previous greatness and the heart aches for more of the same.
Stealing Sheep remain a group that the listener will want to remain stoically resolute to their core ideal and idealism, they are without fabulously entertaining, it’s just that somewhere between 2012 and now, Time, as it must, has moved forward and on, but a particularly different path has been chosen.
Ian D. Hall