Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
From Given to Forgiven, the song is always in the moulded, sculptured hands of Simon Cousins. It is a sculpture that is worked upon, that is designed and produced with full heart, from Given to Forgiven, Simon Cousins holds the listener close and asks only that the latest creation is known for its honesty.
Forgiven Songs, a natural and beautiful successor to the 2014 Given Songs is an album that sits in the hands of the author and is gently rocked, the same feeling of safety, of permanence, easily being suggested and yet the deeper the listener goes, the more awake they find themselves consciously being taken. It is a concept not used enough in music, that the comfortable is suddenly shook out of their musical complacency, that they are torn from the arms of love and offered a choice between understanding or ignoring; and nobody is ever going to ignore, not unless they have been raised as the worst kind of human being.
By staring into the world of Forgiven Songs, the masculine beauty that resides in the flourish, the downbeat and the agreed spectacular, the listener is taken from comfortable to realisation, from content to wanting to change the world and in such state of affairs, hopefully earn the love of good person along the way.
In songs such as What’s Stopping You From Loving, The Heat of the Flame, the excellent The Ballad Of Jimmy Daw, The Miner’s Daughter and Me and the charm of the telling finale Forgiveness, the former member of Wiltshire band Ophiuchus and The Onset, brings home everything that you could possibly desire from the acoustic world and plants it the abundant musical garden with dedication and security. It is an offering of peace, of concord and the bitterness of rage that binds people to their own dogged and often fatal flaws and instead offers tranquillity and hope.
To seek forgiveness you have to be prepared to forgive those who did you wrong, to absolve them of their past, in Simon Cousins, there is nothing to forgive, to pardon, instead there is only the sound of gentle revels high in the air and the sound of calm response.
A beautiful album, fully formed serenity in a world shouting in futile turmoil; gracious and still, Simon Cousins reaches out and once more holds you close.
Ian D. Hall