Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Vienna is seen as one of the true birthplaces of European culture, a place of romance, of music that powders the soul and alludes to setting the explosive keg of at all times and a city that has been as much divided by strife, politics and internal divisions for centuries. It has suffered and it has been glorified, it has been in many cases forgotten and it has been celebrated and any music that comes out of that resurgent city should be seen as powerful reflection of the dominant and prevailing times that it is living in.

That same resurgence has filtered across Europe and in many ways can be seen all around Liverpool. There is of course still much to do but the one thing that sees Liverpool stride away from many of the cities and towns of the U.K. is, like Vienna, in its music appreciation and when there is a bridge made between the two cities, as there is with Nina Fian and her rather hauntingly beautiful song The Fallen Angel, then the ties that bind make it blindingly obvious that there is so much more that unites us than seperates      us out.

The Fallen Angel is evocative of another time, of glories past which have crumbled into dust and half forgotten memory, like songs such Marlene on the Wall or even Ultravox’s Vienna, it is the power of recall that makes the song stand out and seem timeless, ethereal and instant. A song always seems to matter more when there is a connection made between musician and the listener and even if the thought of Vienna and its Grand Opera building, of a city that was just as much divided at the end of World War Two as Berlin and of the thoughts of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud are alien to the listener, the connection is made because Nina Fian employs such command that it is impossible not to make a worthy connection.

Songs that haunt and burrow deep into the psyche are always there to be enjoyed, even if the small sliver of the macabre or disturbed fascination resonates across the speakers, for Nina Fian, that resonating exterior is made with purpose and charm.

Ian D. Hall