Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Rue the day you ever ignore the sound of the angry, of those that a Government decides to dismiss as unworthy or lacking in substance to be anything but a nuisance in their corpulent hides, rue that day you forget what makes a country work, what makes it truly a place in which people look out for each other and not descend into the realms of distance and dispensed with compassion; for in that day the anger, if history has taught us anything is the day when those oppressed, those overlooked and rejected will fight back and see an edifice crumble.
Only Child, a poet in the form of a songwriter in the body of one of Liverpool’s most vivacious voices, for Alan O’ Hare, his latest E.P. is not only personal, it is a huge comment on the way we can view our society today, the pleasantry of wanting a better land to live in, one not tainted by greed, by taking hard earned rights away, by not playing the game as equals or with only with thing in mind, to eventually destroy the Working Class.
Recorded at Crosstown Studios by the tremendous Jon Lawton, Alan O’ Hare’s five track E.P. is one of grace dipped in fire, it is the volcano that emerges out of the sea and sets the world alight, yet is majestic enough, powerful enough to held in esteem and shown not to be a entity of destruction but one that we should notice, that we should take heed of and like the songs contained within, should be seen as a prelude to the fertile lands that will inevitably grow beneath its smoking summit.
These are the songs of protest, of an interwoven narrative that must be fed and immersed in, for if the declaration of anger is not heard now, if the call to protect those in the most need in society is not shouted from the highest points then where does that leave us as a nation, where does it leave us a society, fractured and alone, afraid of what the next day might bring or hopeful, seeing change for what it can achieve rather than what is will supposedly ruin, then protest is what we have to do and Alan O’ Hare does it brilliantly.
In the songs The Likes of Us, Working Class, Saturday Morning, My Country is the World and North John Street, protest is the key watchword, it is the remonstration with those who just refuse to see or are blind to the effects and just put down the words as complaint, that there is true anger in the land and that one that allows this to happen is as divided as ever.
A fantastic E.P. by Only Child, one in which the poet steps forth and makes the guitar as frenetic as the erupting volcano, Working Class is just that, an E.P. of outstanding work and beautiful class.
Ian D. Hall