Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

What you create today is by no means the final moment into which you will inspire somebody, even if it yourself somewhere down the line, where you stop to take in the possible reflected glory of your pain-staking effort, and realise that at some pint along the path there is a moment in which you can revisit, in which the foundations you once laid down with bare knuckles and hopeful design, can still serve as a resolution to continue striving for excellence.

To deny the creative past is to stumble, the stone in which you have placed your footing and your future upon would surely give way, and all that would be holding you up is the clay and the mud, slowly dragging you down, gradually wearing you away. To embrace it is to set the seal on the future glory, a retrospective in the making and one that when placed alongside 2019’s Moving On, the John Cee Stannard Blues Orchestra give a huge indication of what was to come bounding across time in The Doob Doo Album.

Looking back at Time whilst it continues to tick away in your hands can be risky, the retrospective a moment possibly of self-congratulation tied up in the bondage of wanting to stand still, of quietly appreciating the applause but finding the clay under your feet slowly congealing, making it hard to move further on in the world you are trying to shape, stagnating, tranquil in your repose but never again banishing the dull from other’s lives.

There has always been companion pieces, the world of art is not show from following up on a great idea, and yet when it comes to music it should be noted that it is often down to the ability to see a moment where the trail splits in two and in which the path not taken holds a greater purpose. It might take time, but as John Cee Stannard shows in The Doob Doo Album and the songs Regular Guy, Lost Lover Blues, Wrong Side Of Town, Hid Behind The Door and Devil’s Own Store, what will come later is a direct response to that incisive early feel, but on its own, comfortable in its pool without its future companion to inject the future on it, it has all the hallmarks of beautiful possibility, of generosity and naked passion within its frame.

John Cee Stannard could not have conceived a companion to The Doob Doo Album at the time it was written, but like all masters of their art, the ability to stride forward whilst being mindful of what has gone before is ever present in the soul of this musician, one to whom the future beckoned and with welcome arms.

Ian D. Hall