Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There are times when you look at the world of art and you wonder why nobody picks upon the ideals or the imagery laid down by American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau; the natural world, a place where the scene of the pastoral and the thought of unexplored sexuality and regret can go hand in hand but not be seen as overbearing or tasteless, instead like Thoreau be seen as gentle, the quivering in the stanza reflecting a need to have a simpler life, one where beauty is celebrated but not overtly pushed or alienated.
This representation is abundant in the new single by Gary Maginnis and the Like, a song that makes its presence known but who does not insist with fury, instead and with passion says that like a great forest or a beautifully preserved orchard beside a leisurely, dawdling river, some things are more appreciated because of their silent or whispering grandeur.
Waiting On The Flood melds both the observer and the writer’s minds to one of remembrance for the long lost, the once mighty feeling of the indestructible and the deliberate love, which thanks to the ebb and flow of life has spilled over the banks in which the heart and memories combine and now threatens to overwhelm. The music played out by Gary Maginnis and the Like representing the desire for slow release, that if the flood must come then let the words be submerged by it and let the feelings drown quietly. “No more walk in the woods” as the Eagles wrote in honour of Thoreau, yet for love lost and the pastoral of Ireland in which they take inspiration from, Waiting On The Flood is as beautiful in its delivery as Thoreau’s was in the 19th Century, when such words were exquisite and passionately written.
A great single with a different edge to it, a song of mindful thought rather than seeking solace in the electrified abyss or the ground breaking search for musical distraction, Waiting On The Flood is both a tribute and the unforgotten memory of love lost and beauty remained.
Ian D. Hall