Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is a tale so beloved that it has had generations of children, and many adults, reading with the intensity of love and interest and finding that nature is truly a wondrous and bountiful place in which to find inspiration and joy from. Kenneth Grahame’s beautifully observed allegory and part reference to the English Pastoral is captured with vivid imagination in the book The Wind in the Willows and the characters are one of the few from that period that beneath the skin of a society that is now almost unrecognisable and one that beats in the heart and resonates with a yearning to return to simpler times.
The Wind in the Willows is also a favourite of Barry Jones of The Southbound Attic Band and it seems only right that this man and his musical partner Ronnie Clark should bring a new creative endeavour to the tale, that they should bring the harmony and the wit to the world of books and make something very special in the album The Willows Suite.
Many bands have rifled the pages of the favourite graphic novels or been stimulated and moved to make something beautiful from reading a particular haunting novel or exceptional piece of prose, Anthrax and Kate Bush easily spring to mind as they both looked to Stephen King and Emily Bronte for their particular muse, so then too do The Southbound Attic Band and the achievement of making something so honest, so touching resonates each time you listen to it.
The sound of a lazy river meandering through the English countryside, the pastoral and the talk of tales interspaced with songs that hold the feeling of the eternal in the clutch of the listener’s hands; this is the songs that fills the riverbanks and makes the listener believe that both Summer in all its golden finery and childhood in all its wonder can live forever.
With tracks such as Wild Wood, To Be A Father, Valpariso Bound and Weasel’s Blues weaving its way through the tale, The Willows Suite is an album of charm, innocence and glory, it is a set of songs that fly with purpose and typical Southbound Attic Band charisma and one worthy of Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece.
Ian D. Hall