Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

If only a winning formula was available to those who seek inspiration but often find that their time is not in the right place, that their heart, for all their worth and experience, for all that they endeavour to achieve, is perhaps missing out because they strike out blindly and without the aid of knowing that all along what they needed to do was follow the rules of succession, namely that being recognised as unique and rare will attract the stories that are in search of exclusivity and passion.

The winning formula may be just a moment of speculation driven by those who seek to explain why some artists are more popular, the x+y =? principle that reads as if it has been handed out as a doctor’s prescription, a boil that has to be lanced less despondency spreads like an infection. It is not that simple, as has always been the case, it comes down to what you believe is success, if it is your face on a million magazines and a more money than you know what to do with it, that is fine, but true success is when the heart and soul understands that what you have created is enduring, beautiful and to which no formula can be credited with.

It is to that end the musicians behind Norway’s The Loch Ness Mouse are strikingly successful and in their follow up to their 2015 self-titled album, it seems appropriate that the artistry that enveloped the sound and passion has kept going, intriguingly whispering across the four years that have passed that there is no formula, but there are principals, there is absolute value and attitude which can be addressed time over, and the result is that The Loch Ness Mouse II is just as keen in its delivery as any of the band’s previous albums.

Inside the package of music there is nothing to suggest standard, instead the songs written by Jorn and Ole Johannes Aleskaer add deep introspection to the pop culture the band inhabits, it is enough to feel the tension of expanding the horizon in what could be described as a sequel, but one in which takes a darker, yet illuminating, turn. The album also benefits greatly with the collective reading of Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn’s poetic journey of By Piccadilly Station I Sat Down And Wept. It is with this inclusion embedded into the Loch Ness Mouse psyche that songs such as Dee C. Lee, Hayland, Simple Song For A Suzuki, Unwarranted and Evelyn reach out and touch the listener, searching for an ear that knows that the artist must have integrity to succeed.

You may know The Loch Ness Mouse, but sometimes those ripples on the water are caused by a bigger beast waiting to introduce itself, and in this latest recording that beast is awake and ready to explain its story.

Ian D. Hall