Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are moments in life when you wish that almost everything was made of velvet, for the luxury feel, the touch of opulence, is enough to send the senses crazy with anticipation, to give the kind of passionate delight that is normally reserved for the first brush of sensuality from the love of your live or perhaps winning the league in the last minute of time and seeing the whole crowd in their Blues cry with delight.
Velvet is lush, luxurious and lavish, by happy coincidence it is also the most perfect way to describe Stevie Nimmo’s latest solo album, the musically fertile Sky Won’t Fall, it is the Blues but with prolific generosity flowing throughout; it is the velvet factory on overdrive and with just a segment of bountiful Blues giving it the hard edge of sanity required so it doesn’t make the listener’s head give way completely into the realms of fantasy melancholy.
You can spend your whole life looking for a great start to an album, sometimes it just comes along with the ease of a light being switched on, as simply as finding the right secluded beach in a foreign country, with about as much effort as understanding that one plus one makes two. It is that simplicity in which Sky Won’t Fall rises to the occasion, it allows the listener to really relax into the album, too not feel the threat of the fret but instead to feel safe in its company and in turn the company of Stevie Nimmo.
The album is industrious but also gentle, it is the happy marriage of less is more meets stark brilliance and in tracks such as Roll The Dice Again, the excellent Still Hungry, the touching honesty within Gambler’s Roll and Lovin’ Might Do Us Good, Stevie Nimmo offers a glimpse of perfection from behind the velvet curtain, it is a glimpse that is almost impossible to pull the eyes away from and ridiculous to ever leave alone for too long.
The Sky Won’t Fall, the Earth will not crumble, however Stevie Nimmo has placed a certain beautiful calm on the lives of listener’s of the Blues.
Stevie Nimmo’s Sky Won’t Fall is released on March 4th.
Ian D. Hall