Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Life is too short to waste worrying too much about the past, it should be seen as a guide, a tutor, the teacher who educates to the point where the lessons are learned, committed to memory, and then the individual should be able to move on with the next moment where they step out blinking in the sun and putting their next triumph on show for people to take notice. We all have regrets, we all play that same image in our heads over and over again, it is natural to think back to the time when the path became a choice; it is taken and we deal, it just might be that the soundtrack is better, even on the Dead Cassettes.
The Bootle sunshine had raged all day, it, along with the music, the attentive and large crowd and the excellent music coming from the Johnsons’ Pavilion had combined into the type of triumvirate worthy of being seen as a head of state, wielding power over the charge that the town certainly deserves more days like this to bring the local community together; it was also fitting that The Dead Cassettes were on the bill of bands, the marriage of acoustic and rock, floating with effortless ease across the old bowling green lawn, through the bank of trees and bashing against the slightly warped for sale sign attached to the old church.
It was in that sense of calm, that reassurance of the two guitars playing with skill and fortitude that The Dead Cassettes wielded authority across the two genres of the day, the marriage, the union of the out and out rock being blessed with the subtle sound of stringed thunder. There really was nothing else to do but let the gravitas of the arrangement hit you hard in the stomach and embrace the new way of thinking from the mind of Paul Nasole.
The Dead Cassettes, so much to love in one short but entertaining set, firmly laid out, the past now an illusion and one in which Paul Nasole’s spirit shines warmly through. The songs catchy, pleasant, lyrically driving home with the power of a sledgehammer against a bagful of nuts and in the songs on offer on the day, Ain’t That A Shame, Without You, Run, Shake The Devil and You Never Give Me Your Love, all explode with as much acoustic force and welded electric muster as is possible and gave the Bootle crowd yet another reason to be thankful for this opportunity to sit in the sunshine and forget, at least for one day, that the powers that be, do not rate their lives with the same respect as should be afforded.
A great set by a new way of thinking set out by Paul Nasole, a graduate of the scene but who keeps bouncing back for me.
Ian D. Hall