Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To say that Rob Clarke And The Wooltones have a gift for making a perfect pop song is to underestimate the clarity and spirit they bring to Liverpool’s all encompassing scene and to the wider world in which they so gracefully inhabit.
Not that underestimating people is a bad thing, it leaves scope in the mind to be always pleasantly surprised, to be filled with a feeling of adoration and love for what they do which stays constant and uplifting at all times. In that regards Rob Clarke And The Wooltones latest single, Brown Paper Bag, is a mixture of memories coined perhaps in part with the beauty that reigned in the public’s eyes 50 years ago as The Beatles took apart the British pop scene with their album Revolver, and by the fact that once upon a time British pop was almost God-like in its appeal to the radio listener and all because of beautiful simplicity, the catchy tones that encompass a feel good factor across the day.
It is in Brown Paper Bag though that the writing and near biting satirical value of Rob Clarke shines through, the imagery which threatens to take the listener down an unexpected route, that all can be solved in life with a carry all and handy bag, that everything can be hidden in plain sight, like the person who found it was easier to hide their particular fetish and yet parade it in such close proximity to others, is both exhilaratingly fascinating and worryingly socially damaging.
Brown Paper Bag is the bounce in the day, the grin that you don’t realise you have plastered upon your face and it is one that cannot be avoided when listening to Rob Clarke And The Wooltones, a single of warmth provided by the fire that burns in the band, a moment of pop majesty that has all the feel of the golden age of Liverpool’s dominance over the pop world but firmly sits in its 21st Century renaissance.
Ian D. Hall