Jimmy And The Revolvers at District for Hope Fest 2015. Photograph by Lis Garrett. Photograph used with kind permission by Lis Garrett.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There is so much in the heart of Liverpool’s ever growing abundant talent list that for many the thought of never leaving the city, never departing from the sound that comes so naturally to the heartbeat by the Mersey, is one that may be tempting. Of course that would deprive the listener of so much enjoyment from elsewhere, however listening to Jimmy and the Revolvers, it can be seen why that temptation would be whisper sweetly and the sense of lingering musical perfume would entice even the strongest and resistant of hearts into being lured in to the thought.

Music is defining; it makes a statement and offers room for discourse and the opening of love and admiration and as the band played their set, including songs such as the opener Lonely, Sunday Morning, The Morning Paper and the awesome Whistle For My Love, the crowd that had buoyed them on over the last few years, took up their cause once more and asked nothing in return except the conformation that their music is undoubtedly a vision of Heaven masked only by the sweet serenade of exuberance and boundless enthusiasm.

When one of the best in the city decides to take their set into a completely different ending, into a place where the rhythm looks at the audience, smiles with untainted glee and gives them the unexpected, that is the mark of band who understand their crowd to the point of faith, to the extremes of mutual confidence and loyalty.

By performing with such dexterous ability the Paul Simon classic Me and Julio Down By The School Yard, Jimmy and the Revolvers not only cemented their sound as being one of the most entrancing, as the natural successors to the great Gerry and the Pacemakers, but as being supremely cool at what they do and as the audience gave their huge vocal endearment to the set and the band, the smile, the never ending smile of a band who perhaps in a different time would have been feted as one of the true Merseybeat sounds, glistened in the dark of the September night encroaching its way ever onwards to the passing of the year.

The day Jimmy and the Revolvers stop being entertaining and such a force will be the day the world may as well swallow music completely, thankfully such things are about as likely to happen as finding the Mersey a bare, deserted featureless quarry.

Ian D. Hall