Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The Great American Challenge has changed, it has become more sophisticated, less about humanity finding themselves in the great unknown and the partially unmapped, now the signposts have all been but removed and nobody truly knows where this great country is going, not those looking in with regret to a former nation of enlightenment and hope, not even those to whom the country represents their heritage and their dreams.
The hope though is still there, in the country’s young, those to whom, no matter their background, persuasion or thought, can still galvanise feeling and be honest with their opinions without ever taking the road of the mundane or the environmentally suicidal along with them for the ride. The Great American Challenge has altered, shifted its course like a river rerouted to make better use of shipping and human activity, no longer on a course set out by the lights of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Jim Morrison, Kate Chopin, Emily Dickinson or Herman Melville; this is now a time where we look to a different America and ask the world to Behold The Brave.
Nashville’s Behold The Brave have the boldness, the sense of adventure deep in their blood and bones that the 21st Century demands; if the river has been rerouted, then some vessels are better suited to the course now sailed upon. It is a vessel of sturdy power, of a vocalist who touches upon a certain quarter of the past, undertones of later Robert Plant weaved in the musical narrative, and who also has the natural sound, the beguilement of the new dawn attached with excellent musicianship bonded, welded together and able to withstand an ocean, let alone the new waterway.
The single is meaty, full of muscle, the kind that sits comfortably in a gym on its own and without the need to show off to a room full of casual admirers, it does its work, it keeps fit and authoritative and should someone take notice, should the world see the new battleship or even the well built pleasure boat then that is all that is required to send the word; America has a new hero in town.
A great song, catchy, full of rhythm and the nod to old blues, but make no mistake, this is part of the new ideal, part of the unexplored Great American Challenge.
Ian D. Hall