Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
The myth of it all, the subtle web weaved that creates illusion and the wonder of the creative, all is alive and well inside the superb minds of The Loch Ness Mouse, a band of stirring quality wrapped up inside the cool and the believed; it is to their self titled album that the myths are made real and the illusion filled in with facts and truths, one of which just how good they are when the music starts to play and where they can take you in their imagination.
Loch Ness is a beauty, a fine place to sit and mull over existence, or if you are fortunate enough, brave enough to take on the swell of the rising water, the spray that gets chucked at you with honest abandon…it is the same for the music, it eats away, nibbles at your grateful soul and in the end walks hand in hand with you as the Sun starts to set over the distant horizon.
The Loch Ness Mouse’s Adne Hovda, Kristoffer Solvang, Christina Hoegetveit, Ingar Sandvaer, Ole Johannes Aleskjaer and Svein Bergsaune all combine with the precision of a well tuned motor car humming its way round the bends and narrow country lanes of the continent, in a time when car ownership was more about the experience than it was about being ugly with pride at the sparkling metal on display; this is the music of forgotten pleasures, of the love of holding a wheel with the wind blowing back your hair and the gear stick ready to move with a sense of calm as each mile is devoured.
In tracks such as Bamboo (Love Is Not Cool), The Cherry Blossom in Japan, Simple Song For A Bookstore and Write To Me Anything, The Loch Ness Mouse play with beauty that entrances, the sound of haunting vocals only second to that in which nature supplies every day if we were to but listen. Sensual without being overpowering, it is the sound of distant forests and waterfalls working in harmony but with the tangible release afforded to anyone who feels the world is too much about the mechanical, the welling up of the insubstantial.
The Loch Ness Mouse is a very well made album that seeks and fulfils its promise to hold the listener close without ever being too encroaching on its privacy, a gentle but stirring sense of cool in an arid land and one to bask in for a good while.
Ian D. Hall