Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

In the modern era, finding yourself on the outskirts of the place where you perhaps grew up, the images flashing before you of all you said and done, the friendships made and possibly that withered away, skeletal, unfed, but now with the return just over the hill, full of flesh and possibility again, all these in the modern age don’t seem to have as much pathos attached to them as they once did. Being happy to be Almost Home is somehow reserved for those that never went away.

Almost Home, the two words of comfort that bring a smile to a furrowed face or tears to those who have been on their own for too long, the thought of the person walking a long, perhaps lonely path, to reach the front door, the distant light and the welcome, pure and simple, honest, Almost Home is arguably amongst the two finest words strung together in the English language.

Almost Home is the feeling of contentment offered by Kathy Stewart as she presents a new collection of songs that play with the feeling of time and of pursuing a life somewhere between two places in which home is be feel assured. Like most artists, Kathy Stewart occupies two planes in which to call home. Not a structure, a building or even places on a map connected by flight paths and motorway service stations but instead the before and after, the start of the idea and the finished article with all necessary plaguing self doubt that fills the in between.

It is in this process that Kathy Stewart makes her album sound sweet, honest, virtuous and full of promise and it is one that survives the in between and any doubt; she simply got on with it and poured her soul into the work.

With tracks such as Zu Zu’s Petals, Old Campaigners, First Robin of Springtime and the zeal that comes with Path of Gold, Kathy Stewart offers the vision of home, the friendly welcome, the light from the fire and the knowledge that the place where they need you, that is truly the place to call home.

Ian D. Hall