Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Out of the resignation of accepted and self-registered failure comes strength and virtue, the realisation that fail does not mean crash out of the dreams you hold, but instead is the accepted truth that to fail means, as many a scholar will be told be their academic masters, it is The First Attempt In Learning.
If we accept failure, even if we suggest it with a wry face and a grin to others, then we must adopt the stance of the naysayer, the ones who sneer at someone else’s inspiration and hopes, and that is a way of life that surely is alien to us as a society. Instead, we must search for the part we play in life as the Sunlight Soap Opera suggests, to play the king or the beggar, the dancer or the one paying the heavy toll to the musician, each must play their part in the spiralling relationship between songs and our hearts.
A self-confessed jazz pianist and the classical singer who suggests coyly that she never practised her scales is not the realm in which failure sits, instead it is the open door to opportunity in which they both have strode confidently that marks Tom Gill and Evie Rapson out as passionately dynamic as they formidably take to task subjects as diverse as the current political sideshow inflicting misery on the country, a lullaby of imparted mother’s wisdom, a vision of how lovers can slowly fall apart and the memory to a friend who sees no escape other than that of falling in line and joining the armed forces.
It is with anger, with a love for extravagance, that the tales of our time fall into the hands of two wonderful performers under the moniker of Me, Thee & E, who are far from the talk of failure, instead they grant positive endearment to those fortunate enough to listen to songs such as Northern Line, Take To The Night, Mathematician, Bee Sting and Billy Joel Song.
There is no such thing as failure unless you lay down and forget all you have learned, it is just a stepping stone to a place where life can hold the extraordinary in a dance that is never silent and full of layered visual defiance. Sunlight Soap Opera is a rousing serial of songs which boldly step out from under the conductor’s baton and starts to reveal life through experience and the luxury of finding the right partner in which to excel.
Ian D. Hall