Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Where you Bound, to not know the journey ahead is to live in a perpetual state of wandering and hope, hope that someone might give you a purpose, hope that eventually everything will work out and in the end be seen as having been a success; occasionally this works, this is by product of the Universe being benevolent and not down to being able to leap the hurdles placed infront of you without clipping your heels.
Knowing, or least having some sort of map infront of you, open to the right co-ordinates and with a pin point of a destination in life, where you are going, or at least where you wish to be is to be admired; even if the journey never reaches its conclusion, at least you will have attempted something others walk away from.
It is a state of mind in which Jenn & Laura Beth share, their music a sense of highly developed intuition, a symbiotic relationship in which the music and lyrics are in tune with the fingers that play the mandolin and the guitar as if they have been melded together, skin and polished wood combined so that the pulse of the rhythm is so electric, so dynamic, you can almost imagine the beat carrying the listener towards their own personal goal.
The upbeat and the consequences of the lyric, the story in which Folk flourishes is absolutely the pinnacle of the album, its genuine appeal to the heart is undeniable and as each song passes through expressions of joy, sorrow, pain and praise, Jenn & Laura Beth take the level of optimism higher; they dismiss the awkward and the over hyped and instead hand out hope that the road ahead will be marked and the miles driven long and eventful.
In tracks such as the superb The Braver One, The Great Divide, If I Had A Lover/The Belle of the Ball and There Is A Time, Jenn & Laura Beth don’t just show where they are Bound but that they are free to do so, there is no rope shackling them, no chains to a life that would see their music stilted or silenced; this is the reality of being bound, sometimes it is at the behest of another’s will that takes you to a place, not your own motivation, being bound is not always free but Bound is a place of magic and freedom to explore.
Ian D. Hall