Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

You can paint words onto a canvas and take the chance that you will, artistically, be recognised and that your sentence is long and fruitful, that even the deaf value your voice and the blind seek out comfortably your vision, that in an age where the artist can no longer rely on being heard or their story told in later years, that the allusion to the greats such as Goya, Rubens or Constable, are not in vein when thinking of the art held aloft.

We can but hope that our art is remembered, no matter how trivial it may seem to us in the waking hours, how beautiful it is when we are asleep, all we can do is look beyond our soul and see it for what it is, the truth in which we are bound, the temptation that our senses crave.

That we should seek a world in which we comfortably can follow our own world view, but one in which we are never aloof or too ashamed to open our hearts and ask for more, more time, more space, more education, that is a truth which must be endorsed, and one that Sam Llanas in his new album Return of The Goya Part 1 takes great strides to take pleasure in and smile within.

It is the sense of completion that the smile is to be heard on the album, a whimsical passion, lyrics that delve into a deep chasm, but just as quickly find a way to lift the spirits, creative fancy but one that demands attention throughout.

In songs such as Follow Your Heart, Recipe, Big Ol’ Moon, Heroes, Down the Line and Long Way Home, Sam Llanas takes the hand of the Americana and infuses it with wisdom, he seeks out the trail that once led him away from home and now wishes it sow it again with the practical and the applied knowledge of he has learned along the way, on the journey; a journey that has been, by anyone’s standards, remarkable.

An album that is embracing, that rises with the listener’s heartbeat, yet one that understands fully that we might wait for a while for the return of a Goya or a Vincent Van Gogh, but there is no harm in treating the artists of the moment with the same longing and respect.

Ian D. Hall