Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It has been mooted recently that the art of poetry is one that is dying. Not only is that a preposterous notion to bandy around but one that deserves contempt by all poets playing their trade for the one perfect sentence and certainly should be treated with scornful derision by anybody who takes the living, breathing sentences of Heath Common and pays them the same courtesy that one would pay the likes of Jack Kerouac. Poetry in such hands is not dead, it’s not resting, it is abundant and playing cerebral havoc as has Encounters with Light that Heath Common provides.
If the last album, The Dream of Miss Dee, was the 21st Century British music equivalent of The Road, then this latest album is The Town and The City, the aspiration of a man whose life stretches out before him, a man who doesn’t put a foot wrong in his pursuit of the long game, a man whose musical genius and guarded word play just leaves you breathless and quivering with anticipation for what is to come.
Encounters with Light has the feeling of being sat in an old bar, the type with spy holes, where secrets are sworn and oaths made in blood. The bar dimly lit, resistance fighters looking around with nerves of steel as they make sure there is an escape route free at all times and in the corner, a man with life in his eyes plays a song so radical that all stop to hear him finish.
These are the songs of freedom, of movement and inventive honesty. They have a structure and whimsical authority all of their own and yet they are bound by one common thread, the sincerity of a man asking his listeners to go with him on the journey, to take heed of the cautionary tales and act with openness; it is a journey frequented and mused upon and it is delicious in its intent.
Tracks such as Two Immortals, the stunning Diggers Not Dead, which has such a beautiful backing vocal supplied by Mandi Leek, Ray The Cat, Lenny Bruce and the terrific Angeline Albertine really do perform musical cartwheels in front of the listener, they bat away every convention in which the snide and malicious bemoan the poetic heart and leave them cursing for proving them wrong.
One of the great unsung heroes of his generation, Heath Common truly understands what it means to tell a story worth listening to. Encounters with Light shines brighter than a national monument that’s been polished within an inch of its life.
Ian D. Hall