Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is always about timing, the ability to get the message across at the right moment in which maximum exposure and feeling can be felt. It is the feeling of responsibility to Time, of leaving your trusted and dedicated shoe print in the sands that will eventually swallow you whole, that must be adhered to if any point to what you believe passionately in is too survive.

The Skin we inhabit and The Wall we shelter behind, all are aided and confident to Time’s craving for self destruction and beautiful illusion. It is a confidence that Liverpool’s The Roscoes are happy to share in, to bide alongside Time and playfully suggest with meaning that Time should take a hike for a while, that it must stop if the next generation of musicians that live in sight of the tidal wake of The Mersey are to have their say and be seen to mean it. It is a say that flourishes each time that The Roscoes turn on the amps and let their music fly.

The double A-side of Skin and The Wall is to be seen arguably as perfect timing, of shift in a momentum that will garner even more affection for a band that argues the point of existence incredibly well, that it is not just not enough to exist, to be seen to be breathing in all the right places, it is a moral duty to our lives that we must create something tangible, something that shows our own individuality and argument for continuation to the highest peak we can take it.

The two songs complement each other perfectly and yet the twist in each song, the undercurrent of dispute, of a perhaps unheard rage or scream in the dark, is stealthily employed in Skin, so much so that the battle between rage and calm is merged, it is blurred into a single biting entity and the case of the wild timed and spirited occasion is elevated to appoint of no return; this is the next stage for The Roscoes, the next mark in a bedpost that is so well notched it requires the services of a master woodworker to fix; it is the notch of sincere growth that makes the listener glow with excitement of what is surely to follow.

A marvellously adept Double-A side, one that bites with vengeance at Time and the doubter’s passive forlorn tugging at the coat-tails of insincerity, this is the brutal reality of a band growing to their full potential and it is a beautiful sight.

Ian D. Hall