Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Not everything makes sense the first time that you approach the novel or the inspired difference, it might take a while for the unusual to sink in and few head scratches shared between friends and discussions with those that you share the news with. Then there is a moment of clarity, a smile of recognition envelopes your face and all that you took for granted can be replaced, a new thought in which to Love And Unlearn is a way to grapple with the world that declines to play by the rules you were taught to follow.

Such rules are a passing moment, they are fluid, effortless, perhaps even graceful but they are set by a power that doesn’t want others to play the game as well as they do. It takes courage, a forcefulness and desire to place a new direction before the court and let the others that the rules of expression have changed in your favour; and for Gentle Stranger and their debut album, Love And Unlearn, artistic expression is a discovery in which to study with all your might.

Love And Unlearn is about texture, ambition and the willingness to be adventurous and experimental, and across the small arrangements and big ideas such as Dunce Disco Anthem, Plastic Skeleton, Rook In The Rafters, Like A Deer, Trope After Trope and the full delivery of Obvious as Snow, all that remains is an understanding, the knowing glance passed between artist and those willing to explore the uncharted and the unknown with them.

Such explorations normally require a brief guide, a shaded outline of the interior that awaits the willing passenger, however for Gentle Stranger, the interior is what the listener makes of it, no rough sketches, no signs proclaiming that this is where dragons can be found, instead the canvas is new, untouched but very much pointing the way to admiration and education.

It is in ambition that we either creatively soar, or we fall upon our knees and ask for forgiveness for attempting, this can be a bind when forgiveness is not necessary, but instead a case for being told to continue, to keep trying, attempting, succeeding, should be heard, and for Gentle Stranger the words should be clear and loudly spoken, “the interior has been breached and we like what we find there; please, show us more.”

Gentle Stranger release their debut album, Love And Unlearn via Prah Recordings on January 31^st.

Ian D. Hall