Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To talk of dreams to someone can be the breaking point in the conversation, the sudden roll of eyes and the distant yawn; all this because don’t want to be bogged down in the subject of the subconscious, yet perhaps we should take stock occasionally and if not listen to others and try to understand them psychologically, at least have a deeper resonance with our own soul. Dreams are part of us, it helps us make sense of the insanity of time and our place in it.

To listen to someone else’s dream, to look for the hidden meaning in a simple phrase is to show empathy, Oneirology, to study dreams, to feel between the black and white exciting, pulse raising noir or the multi layered nightmare in full glorious colour, to say I Only Dream is doing your mind a great and terrible disservice.

For Hegarty, to say I Only Dream is to acknowledge a stunning return to the studio, a song that feels as though it has been born from a dark place but one that with the surprising gentleness afforded it in the vocals has a sense of beguiling and soothing aspiration that bursts into the light with spirit and adventure.

In the same sense that Frank Sinatra brought the stunning song by Paul Anka My Way into the light, one that also came from dark realisation, the song takes stock of a person’s life, but one not grounded in a reality, instead one that understands the link between the heartbeats, the moment between the tic and the tock in which all possibilities are endless. There is no crashing crescendo, it is not a ballad of damnation of two fingers up to society, it is a comfortable creature, one of elegance and softly whispered dreams.

I Only Dream captures the moment in which we wish to acknowledge that there is something deeper than we care to open up about, than we wish to divulge to even our best friend for fear of rejection, or worse, ridicule. I Only Dream is a song of patience and fine delivery Hegarty have produced something incredibly cool in the studio; it is what listening to music is all about, finding a dream song to love.

Ian D. Hall