Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The songs of personality, of courage to step beyond the edge of the microphone and let the glare of spotlights, of other people’s pride in your ability shine through, is the point of being alive. There is something perverse in the express desire to only want to put your voice, your own natural stamp on the Universe expressly with the thought of money being the final result. Art in whatever form, life in all its beauty should be heard for what it gives to other people and Euan Drysdale’s Songs From The Boarwood is a superb example of what art can bring to other people’s lives.

The open handed gesture of friendship, of the smile in the darkest of rooms and the most shattering of times is one that comes across from the gentle but wonderfully erudite performer; it is delivered with a sense of strength and purpose which is beguiling and one that whisks the listener away to a realm far beyond their own shores.

Songs From The Boarwood may seem simple in its artistry but it is one that has a sense of perspective, of grounding and security attached to it; an album that sits beside the riverbank and allows the sway of the river to magnify the world’s issues but bring them down to a level that the introspection of it all becomes solvable, to understand that the answer is sometimes staring you right in the face and the ripples on the surface are only caused by your feet dangling into the stream.

Simple, effective, clean and stirringly beautiful, Songs From The Boarwood needs no decipher, no drawn out explanation, it just requires the openness of spirit to catch the exhale of pleasure from the listener’s lips.

Tracks such as Dark Moon, The Ballard of Billy Blue and the enormity of The Last Grey of the Evening are weaved with pleasure by the artist, the sense of confinement being dispelled and shaken loose till finally only freedom at the water’s edge remains.

A wonderfully presented set of songs in an album of true sincerity, Songs From The Boarwood is liberty.

Ian D. Hall