Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

To the memory of all the great poets, the scribes with no forethought of fame or fortune, whose only reward it may have been was to get the words out of their heads, to let them finally depart their minds, to this end Ellyn Maybe and Robbie Fitzsimmons can only be seen as honouring, dedicating themselves to the cause of poetry and in their album Skywriting With Glitter, they truly take on the words with absolute sincerity of spirit and fashionable beauty.

Poetry perhaps doesn’t get the same respect that it once enjoyed, it is still an art form that is hugely popular but unless you are a big name that has ties to the sparkling ties of the 60s, you can be seen to playing to a small, yet absolutely loyal audience. The days perhaps of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Britain’s own Mersey poets are but faint ripples on the shore, the dynamic cool of Simon Armitage arguably the biggest and most admired name around on this small island; yet poetry remains, its innocence, its fever, its advantage of honesty over all art, this is how Ellyn and Robbie portray their work, the sheer depth of scope in their words and added to with passion, the sound of collected notes and bittersweet reminisce.

Listening to Skywriting With Glitter, the listener cannot but help to be impressed with the way that they make the lyrics stand out, beyond the stifling form of constricted prose, this is poetry in its most free form and yet because of the music that goes hand in hand with the words, it is given so much scope to thrill its audience, the passion for steam was never killed by the sight of electricity, if anything it made it more desirable and so too in this poetic nature Ellyn and Robbie score brilliantly with one of the more eclectic and visionary albums of the year.

With tracks such as What Color Is Your Parachute, The Girl In The Wishing Well, Marathon and Kingdoms in the City Lost to Time, this is an album of direction, of the past brought into sharp focus and made whole once more, a set of collected songs that thrill, that are more than words, more than music, they are a memorial to all that was in a better time and all that could be again given persuasion and Time.

Ian D. Hall