Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It’s All The Rage… fear, anger, the frenzied daily attacks that leave us blindsided and feeling like our minds have become the plaything for lesser men to manipulate; it is all the rage, this feeling of anxiety, of thunder in the hearts but no lightning to spark the brain into the rebellion, or at least urging on those who are willing to tackle the subjects so few are able to comprehend.

It’s All The Rage and Ian Siegal has enough fire flowing through his veins, sufficient fervour and beautiful ire, to take his new album and take aim as if it were a cannonball and tear down the hastily built defences of those whose only contribution to the world is to internally combust with delight at the thought of committing all the insidious acts that we find repulsive, that we find sparking our own sense of peace as if being desecrated from the inside out.

Yet in typical consummate fashion and deserving hard threads and sumptuous blues, the fury is turned, it is still there resonating, the pulse still quick and frighteningly full on, yet the odd degree out, as if it has found a way to look at the issue from an another angle, almost like a comedian taking pot shot through satire at the Government, it doesn’t always have to be humour led, satire is far too clever for that, but it must be recognisable and Ian Siegal, alongside Dusty Ciggaar, Danny Van’t Hoff and Rafael Schwiddessen, introduces it to the proceedings with craft and panache, an anger that burns but which glows like the Devil when the houselights go down and the guitar takes a swing on stage.

In the consecutive tracks Jacob’s Ladder, The Sh*t Hit, Won’t Be Your Shotgun Rider and Ain’t You Great, Ian Siegal lifts the lid of the joint venture of anger and satire, and what emerges is a polished and satisfying production, one dipped in the raw emotion but one also that is clean, purifying and emotionally exhilarating.

With other tracks such as One Eyed King, Sweet Souvenir and the exceptional Sailor Town all leaving their industrious mark on the album, It’s All The Rage could be said to be in fashion, but Ian Siegal is too good for that, instead this is just the latest in a collection of recordings which justify all the talk, all the words written, it is Ian Siegal down to a tee and the taste is exceptional.

Ian D. Hall