Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are times when you just want to round up the four members of The Mono LPs and shake them by the hand for giving you a few minutes of absolute pleasure, longer of course if you are fortunate to catch them live. However, for the time it takes for their new single Emilia to reach its explosive end, not only do you want to shake them by the hand but you would offer them anything to release a double album in which to sink the entire day into.

Emilia has that The Mono LPs vibe that has been so gratefully received by Liverpool audiences over the years but with the feeling and emotionally scale that used to sit in the days of the big American blockbuster, the songs that used to have British audiences foaming at the mouth for. Emilia sits alongside the songs of bands such as Survivor, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner but with that graciousness that the likes of XTC provided for the home crowd. The Mono LPs are that, and much more and Emilia is just another step to proving it.

What provides the difference is the complete honesty that abounds from all four members, the sheer scale of performance, it is the rock sensibility wrapped in a pleasure and revelry of being uniquely fascinating and with the Liverpool’s Commander of the bow very much in aural attendance, the beauty, the chilling force that sits in each carefully scripted word plays like the first brush of kiss from a strange but exotic mouth.

There really is no holding back when it comes to The Mono LPs, singular, fruitful, hugely productive and protective of their place in the hearts of Liverpool’s ever flowering music cast list. That protection works both ways and once again it shows in the band’s latest single. Lesser works of art have hung in the National Gallery; Emilia deserves its own wing.

Ian D. Hall