Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is not much in life than can withstand the Wind & Stone when the elements decide humanity needs to be subjected to passion and the response of intimate warning that comes with Time. The wisdom of the age precludes that the walker must turn their face to the wind to feel life and that no hair remains unturned in its wrath and gentlest blow, whilst the block of stone that you pick up is just but a statue waiting to be fashioned.

It is in this thought that the wind and the stone stand guard pondering and in the image of the Inukshuk they combine to add strength of purpose to humanity’s search for poetic meaning and the desire to shape and fashion their own landscape, their own story.

For Scotland’s Finn Paul, passion abounds as his voice captures the essence of pursuing your own environment, of chiselling away at the stone in which you wish to see others understand, and in which the wind will slowly erode making way for others to have the confidence to see their own dream terrain take shape.

In Finn Paul’s Wind & Stone, the experiences he has undergone, the enchantment of seeing life from different shores, all combine to bring folk inspired songs to a place where magic has not been forgotten, where a world of creation enthuses the man-made Inukshuk that stands guard and where songs such as The Watcher, Norwegian Sea, Anna, Drive It All Away and the album’s title track, Wind & Stone are given the breath of life that we all so badly need and in which the panoramic view is enough to make you believe in a higher purpose of existence.

It is the accent of narrative that we are swept of our feet, the wind pushes us along and the stones mark the way, the miles travelled and the miles still to go, regardless of whether it is the pebble skimmed across the lake or the marble statue which took shape over thousands of hours, each marks the passing of time; the narrative of that time which is understood and celebrated by Finn Paul.

An album that sings gently of secrets and reveals, passionate and watchful, Wind & Stone is the backdrop to how we wish to see our own landscape take shape.

Ian D. Hall