Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If Dead Men Have No Dreams then the living have their work cut out in attempting to fulfil their ancestors’ visions.

To honour the visions, the imaginings and the ideas of those that went before you, you must at first make sure you understand the message that they sent you during the dreaming and whilst they may be gone, turned to bones and dust, their memories still live on, through us, through the songs we sing and the instruction to the future to bear witness at the folly or the greatness we have inspired. 

The consistency of Matthew Robb’s album, Dead Men Have No Dreams, is brought about by listening to what is beyond what is said, it is in the silence that the greatest wordsmiths and lyric writers hold their tongue and let their sentence do the talking and across a set of songs that combine pathos, joy, humour and culpability. There is no finer attribute to bring to mind than those who bring their dreams to life within their time. Dead men don’t dream, but the living can achieve all their desires if they put their mind to it.

It is consistency in desire that sees this marvellous album come to the fore and with tracks such as Common Destiny, Red Light Blues, Valley Of Stone, Spoils Of War, When Am I Gonna Wake Up and the album title track Dead Men Have No Dreams all conjuring up realities made of steel and the ambition driven by dreams, and backed with the stunning performance by the musicians Tobias Hoffman, Cecil Drackett and Marcus Rieck, the pulse that sends shivers down the spine is one of perpetual grace.

To understand dreams, you must want to embrace the truth, no matter how unpalatable, no matter how rare and beautiful; for Matthew Robb it is a dedication to the course of action that can make dreaming such a pleasant and colourful pursuit of time.

An album of outstanding intellect and bounty, Dead Men Have No Dreams is album crafted to prove that statement wrong, we just need to listen to what has been to understand that.

Ian D. Hall