Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We all deserve to find that feeling, even if it just once, of A Bright Ray of Sunshine that will somehow fill our day with possibility and memory, of leading into a realm inhabited by the mystical and the fire, of seeing into a landscape that is both undeniably alien and yet also comfortably familiar, of witnessing the heather bloom in a far of land that is part of your own understanding and yet has ways that mystifies and perplexes the mind. We might seek the bright ray of sunshine but unless we are careful, we also could find that we are entranced by it to the point of not focusing on anything else for a while.
Barry Nisbet’s inspired album is a set of ten original songs that is a collaborative endeavour but one that feels uniquely singular, a vision of someone’s homeland realised by the group collective and one that adds intrigue and passion for the furthermost points of the islands we inhabit, for the lands of Britain’s most northerly Folk Festival, for the work of Ann Cleaves and her fictional detective Jimmy Perez, for the mystery of the north beyond the sea.
It is a mystery captured in full by Barry Nisbet and those he surrounds himself with, Theo Barnard, Ade Dacre, Stephen Jack, Amira Kremers, Fiona McAndrew, Robbie Ward and Robin Wynn Evans, the images of a land so clear, so steeped in the struggles of history, of being between two worlds, is one that is hard to resist or shake off.
It is in the mix of Folk, the influence of Jazz and the edge of Americana that makes this album so hauntingly beautiful and in tracks such as Comfortless Cove, Brydon’s & Anona’s Wedding Waltz, Hunger’s Daughter, Da Balld o Da Jessie, Come in the Summertime and Imperial Jig/Night Trip to London, all the experiences of being at once a natural and instinctive person of the island but with the urge to go beyond the rocky and often treacherous outline, A Bright Ray of Sunshine is all that is needed to guide you from the love you feel but also to draw you back when the time is right.
A utterly heartfelt set of songs in which Barry Nisbet has seen fit to allow the listener the opportunity to hear, to lay in the long grass and glimpse into his world, one inhabited by A Bright Ray of Sunshine.
Ian D. Hall