Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

No matter how far we go in life, there is always that thought at the back of the mind that makes you tremble with delight and concern in equal measure, that notion, the inkling that someone is Calling Me Home, that something is imploring you to walk back into the lives of those you may have left behind.

It is a feeling that sweeps over you like an artist’s brush delicately placed upon a canvas, each particle of paint patiently making contact with reality, creating a picture in which the only reasonable thing to do, the only proper response is to succumb to the will of fate and once again shake hands with the past.

It is in that will of fate that the genre of Americana has slowly, but industriously, found a way to seep into the gentle pores of the public’s conscious once more, a renaissance with many devotees on both sides of the Atlantic discovering once more what personality it has, what style it can create, and when performed in the right hands, such as Liverpool’s Limerance, in Red Pine Timber Company or in Perth’s Longstay, then what was in the groove of all was not was calling you home, but finding again what made you love in the first place.

It seems incredible to think of Longstay as such a young band, an average age of only 17 binding the group, and yet like the Everley Brothers, it is not age that defines, but the heartbeat within the soul, and in the debut album by the band, songs  such as Mariah, Forever, A Ring Of Fire, Summerton, Thoughts I Can’t Find and the trembling beauty of Leaving, this five piece band have captured the seemingly intangible, ghostly memories of artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and generated with modern day enthusiasm and hard-work style, a subtle concrete foundation in which to build upon, in which to leave a lasting mark on the future.

A sound of youthful dynamic that you know is Calling Me Home, one of substance and gravitas.

Ian D. Hall