Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It’s funny that what can be found hidden away in an attic might just be the reason behind any smile that emerges from the least expected place. The hidden treasure that is tentatively held and brushed with careful inquisitive can be the one that carries the noblest of intentions and the loftiest of ideal
Like a much loved set of Pre-Renaissance poems or stories that have caught the ear because of their free- flowing nature and perfect alliteration, the likeness in the modern age is never carried too far from the reality that life never truly moves on too much and what makes us laugh, smile, weep and love today is the same as it always has been. For SOHO SQ.’s Barry Horrocks and Liv H, the attic not only revealed the likeness of tranquil repose and inner beauty available to the pair but also the resemblance of a thousand artists pushed gently aside in their creative wake.
Semblants is an album of warmth and culture, of dreams and the waking hospitality one comes to expect from an album shrouded in lyrics that are of a poetic and binding nature and ones that have the grace of a woman thrust happily into the limelight and for whose voice is as pure as a strand of silk held between a baby’s finger and thumb.
The attic studio, Standing Room, in which the songs were carved out, brought together and placed within the melody driven spectacle have such a subtlety of spirit within them that they resonate a clear and crisp sense of humanity’s sense of the ever-lasting. In tracks such as The Frozen Detail of your Heart, the elegant Rituals of Edwardian Dance, Night Screening and the sheer sense of finality in Destination are placed upon a type of pedestal or plinth that would not go amiss with the words Venus de Milo painstakingly engraved into it. Such is the beauty of the songs that they really do get underneath the skin and allow for a sense of propriety and modesty to be gleaned and enjoyed.
The attic may reveal such treasures when the explorer doesn’t realise what they are looking for and yet in Semblants, the way is pointed through the beams, webs and collected dust and the prize at the end is worth enduring all for it.
SOHO SQ.’s Semblants is released on September 7th.
Ian D. Hall