Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Regardless of whether you are on someone else’s Frequency or not should not preclude you from trying to understand them, to see their world through their eyes, to seek out what drives them; you might not get along, but it should never interfere with your ability to break bread with them, to discuss the state of play and what it means to come together in peace and reconciliation.

A settlement, an accord, to drink and salute another’s passion and hope that they afford you the same curtesy, it is not always high on our agenda, too often do we seek out the bubble in which we are comfortable inhabiting, the trouble being is that by taking this course of action we have no way of figuring out what riches there could be outside the sphere we have placed ourselves in. It is a sense of being involved with the world that sees us neglect what could be in favour of what has always been.

Liverpool’s The Tea Street Band’s latest offering, Frequency, can be seen as a guiding light in many respects to that conundrum, by moving outside what can be seen as secure, we allow the brain to gather new information about our surroundings, we see the rate of incidences that bind us gather and fold neatly, rather that tearing us apart; in art, as in in life, if we are open to new frequencies the joy of learning is accelerated.

Four years in the making, The Tea Street Band’s follow up to their 2014 self-titled debut is one of cohesion, the principal of working together a recommended bible, a text book of strategy and panache all rolled together to conceive a work of art that beguiles and hypnotises, a call back to some of the great electronica of the past but one that is wildly different; a new frequency, a lure in which there is no trap, just a sense of gravity pulling you in.

With tracks such as Sacre-Coeur, Feel It, Marseilles Blues, Hearts Collide and Enter The Void all playing their part in keeping the album fresh and exciting, Frequency is not just a dialled scan across a range of emotions, it is deliberate, the dial acutely aware that it has a responsibility to draw you in to the conversation, one that The Tea Street Band do with stunning accuracy.

We have a duty to explore, to believe that there is more to the world than white noise or the trusted favourite in which we constantly embrace; occasionally we have to sweep the dial to an unknown Frequency and be transported to a different voice singing our song.

Ian D. Hall