Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The young angry punk and rock rebel may have long since changed, morphed and become the sophisticated and worldly embracing lady of music, but there is always a twinkle in the eye of anyone who was blessed with the urge to rebel, to see beyond the straight and narrow and embrace the chance to witness the Wilder Shores that is denied to so many because they cannot sense how enormous or how exciting it is.
Belinda Carlisle is the sophisticated lady of popular music, a woman to whom the past may be another country but it still reminds her of Heaven, of the time when she was arguably the woman to whom the world listened with great intent and with the happiness of discovery as a solo artist.
Wilder Shores is a natural progression, the lady cannot be seen as the rebel forever but she marks out a different tune in which to inspire others with, to set a tone of beauty in the guise of passion whilst wearing the clothes of revolution and carrying the sword into battle, not as a figurehead but as the stately queen hiding her armour underneath the cloak; it is in the armour built up to resist the barbed and the comments of the ungratified that shines in the album.
The songs are a natural progression because they embrace change, a person, an artist not afraid to take a song and give it an exotic feel, the different tongue in which to celebrate life in all its diverse and incredible forms, without the Wilder Shores there is nothing to make you appreciate the peace of the plains, without the raging tempest in the eye you can see what beautiful rage lays underneath the surface of the sea.
Songs such as Ek Ong Kar Sat Gur Prased, Light of My Soul, Humee Hum Brahm Hum, Long Time Sun and a rather intriguing version of Ms. Carlisle’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth adding a grand sense of perspective to the body of work by the former Go Go’s leading lady.
A distinctive set of songs, a huge statement from Belinda Carlisle, a familiar yet time honoured release by Belinda Carlisle, once again the sense of respect between singer/songwriter and listener knows no bounds.
Ian D. Hall