Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Somewhere in the film set deserts the ghosts of characters, once clutching a fistful of dollars and harbouring resentment and animosity, believe they have been entranced by the score of Ennio Morricone, a sound filtering across the desert scenes lifts their spirits, the man with no name smiles charismatically and understands that the call heard is not that of the flourish of the Matador as they take to the Spanish ring, but that of the most splendid debut album by Liverpool’s Red Rum Club, one of magic conceived, one of overwhelming cool.
You would normally have to imagine the fields of battle to get any idea on how explosive sound can be, or at the very least the haunting vocals of a large and swelling crowd as they sing at full volume their appreciation of the spectacle opening up before them, and yet as Red Rum Club open up their debut album with the image of a muscular frame dominating the proceedings, the square jaw of music firmly set, rigid, unstoppable, the sound is one that you would exclaim is the big feature, an atmospheric ride into the valley and silencing the cannons from the left and right.
It is in the full arsenal of music might that this album exists and across such songs as Would You Rather Be Lonely, T.V. Said So, Nobody Gets Out Alive, Calexico, Remedy (To Clean A Dirty Soul), it is in the sound of the advance as the energetic pulse is announced, infectious and unescapable, the trumpet urging the perseverance onwards, the lyrics contemplative and living in the light of the absorbing poetic beat.
For Fran Doran, Tom Williams, Michael McDermott, Simon Hepworth Neil Lawson and Joe Corby, Matador is a sense of completion of the initial phase of their pursuit of creative beauty, for the listener it is proof positive it is the sense of the inevitable being heard, that this exhilarating insistence of wild passion is one with no bull, just absolute performance, a proclamation of cool.
Red Rum Club release the album, Matador, on 11th January.
Red Rum Club will be performing at The Old Courts in Wigan on March 22nd
Ian D. Hall