Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

For some coming from a small town can be seen as having a disadvantage in life, the urge to see beyond the scope of vision afforded its narrow borders, surrounded perhaps by open fields, countryside exploration and closed older minds blinded by centuries of tradition and often the inability to change as the younger townsfolk either walk away, never wishing to return, or those who stay arguably losing the fight to see revolution in the shires take effect.

It is in those Small Towns that Mondegreen sit and ponder the course of action, the slow hopeful insurrection that can only come with time as the big city lights beckon and call with glistening favour and the chance to be something bigger than the world had allotted you; the small town becoming stuck in its own idyllic fantasy, one that has no young soul attached, beating in the darkness and creating positive mutiny.

Perhaps it is fitting that the misinterpretation of such feelings, those of the more conservative element residing in the people of the small town, where they consider themselves custodians to the past and woe betide anyone who stands up for change, should be exemplified by three incredible musicians and song writers who themselves are a glory of personification of change. The rebels with kindness, the sheer depth of their music conquering the bland and unmoveable but with a sense of compassion in their voices, the marker of being human but also getting the point across and extolling the virtue of the saying, if you have to resort to shouting, then you have already lost the argument. In this considered approach to making the listener understand without shaking them by the shoulders, Mondegreen triumph in their new single Small Towns.

There is nothing wrong with the small town, to some it is refreshing to see tradition prevail over constant readjustment, yet the mentality of some in these dark forgotten places is such that resistance is always an option, that the need for even the single moment of quiet determined anger is enough to sear that for groups such as Mondegreen, Small Towns is the perfect retort, the wave of talking up a situation rather than allowing it be discussed to death and with no support in the action.

A class single, Mondegreen truly hit home with a large hammer and delicate hands, an issue that has greater significance in the mind than first thought of.

Ian D. Hall