Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are many things that we believe we should be able to say with those we share our lives with, regardless of the relationship, regardless of Time, yet we keep certain things to ourselves, we find that the path of least resistance is the one best chosen as it offers the better chance of peace and security.

In our minds though we play out the scenarios in which You & I are unafraid, only to happy to confront and yet we still hold back, the empathy, the care we have with that person is enough to not want to destroy the connection we hold dear; we skirt the issue, we banter back and forth and in the end, unless the balance is tipped too far one way, we come out of it believing we have spoken our mind and that attitudes, behaviours are smoothed out and then the surprise when we find we have to partake in the conversational tango once again.

You & I is the latest single from the sublime musician and song writer Natalie McCool. It is a song that resonates with a scream of inner passion let loose across the void between two people and one, that with her wonderful sense of humour and dramatic poise, that captures the essence of relationships, the frequent inequality in a relationship where one person does not notice the others more seemingly benign verbal attacks.

The beguiling way Ms. McCool handles herself in her writing is very evident in You & I, it is a song that begs to be solved, the riddle of the relationship wanting desperately to be kept alive but also one in which the lyric offers various solutions and clues to why it might eventually come falling down.

It is a song of great wealth and vitality, a song of passion and warmth dressed in the pop ditty style and yet underneath the surface is one of utter complete brilliance. You & I never fail in the end, it is only when the words are not spoken with honour do we find ourselves skirting the issue and life itself.

Ian D. Hall