Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Whether you rain on someone’s parade or spoil the day’s mojo, to bring someone down is perhaps the most injurious of crimes you can inflict upon another person’s mood or psyche; occasionally you might need to commit such an act to prevent harm from coming to them, from stopping them making the absolute fool of themselves, but that is always acceptable, welcome in some cases, but you should never go out of your way to make someone else feel bad about themselves just so that you can smile, smile and yet be a villain.

Don’t Bring Me Down, the sound of the joyful, those who achieved something glorious, permanent, and uplifting to both others and their own sense of purpose, against the backdrop of those who go out of their way to demean, degrade and mock, the weird obsession that comes firmly attached with jealousy and resentment. Don’t Bring Me Down, the call out to the critic to understand, to be bold enough to step inside the shoes of the artist and celebrate, if possible the vision and dream dared to be realised.

It is by stepping inside the shoes and thoughts of Keith Lally that the listener finds empathy, realises again that understanding is paramount, and even if the subject is too difficult or not within your comfort zone, at least listen, never truly dismiss, for the sound of anyone’s music is a finer greater pleasure and reassurance than the sound of sudden silence.

Keith Lally’s four song strong E.P. contains songs that make the listener not only want to honour the bond between artist and receptive audience, but to also understand the passion, the soft tilted voice with the gravity of age and determination thrown in and in each track, Death Discotheque, Nobody Knows, Baby Driver and the E.P. title track, Don’t Bring Me Down, that gravitas of thought and voice are mutually positive, sure, certain and with assuredness.

Don’t Bring Me Down is an E.P. in which to be upbeat and praise, Keith Lally has grasped something very special and rightly passed it on to the world.

Ian D. Hall