Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The road trip across an entire continent, the sense of travelling with purpose and discovery, not only of a strange and often bewildering land, but of yourself as well, your inner rage, your calm and collected peaceful moments, the tears and the laughter; you don’t get the same response from your soul when all you have done is seen the road through other people’s memories or through the camera lens, it may give you a start but sometimes you do truly have to experience it for yourself.

One Day you pick up a piece of art, be it an album or possibly an out of print book, yellowed by the sun beaming down on its pages and seen by passers-by in an old curiosity shop, and you will be transported inside the artist’s heart, to feel the words so passionately, to hear the tune with so much fervour, that you want to experience the world as they envisage it; be it the long road from coast to coast or just the delight of gazing upon a long lost relic or tomb buried deep in the desert.

It is a vision held out with a sensational open hand by Jimmy Rae & The Moonshine Girls in their new album One Day, Americana at its most beautiful, a sense of the road not only offered but imploring the listener to take in the words fully, for in the open eyes and lyrical adventure that unfolds, a recognition comes into full view; this is the journey you have been on all your life and it is one that One Day you might find yourself writing, thanks to the inspiration set down by Jimmy Rae, Sarah-Lou Fletcher and Izzy Ryder.

Each track is an explosion of good taste, of discovery, of capturing the feeling of the map makers and pioneers Lewis and Clarke as they carefully made their way to a different coast line. It is that reaching out to a different world that the songs placed together with style and in one single session, ring out and herald the way.

Tracks such as Put The Foot on the Gas, When We’re Old, the brilliant Nashville Here I Come, the heart-breaking 365 Tears and the marvellous Under The Mersey Moon resonate with the familiarity of connection, of being a set of songs that the three musicians make more than just songs, they are the note worthy event on the way to sighting unknown, but lush territory.

One Day, it is hoped, all will find this particular truth out, till then make ready to have the map ready, for a spectacular adventure awaits you.

Ian D. Hall