Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is not in deep waters that we find the use of a guide, but in dealing with the shallower and smaller depths of life that we wish for a navigator, the one who will, without qualm or apprehension of spirit, know exactly the right path in which to lead you away from danger and back to the high seas and the thrill of adventure.
Between home and those roaring maritime quests lay the murky waters of a voyage we are arguably unable to withstand because of lack of clarity of vision and because we have fallen overboard into the grasp of the shallow minded and the jagged rocks of the superficial before, there is a tendency to either never leave the comfort of the routine or fear the vast potential available; and it is that enormous gulf of deep water and thought to which Kit Hawes and Aaron Catlow have set their sails unfurled for, and as the Pill Pilots lead them out to stormy, vibrant and exotically charged seas, the map they have is detailed and full of description.
Some maps heed the warning of here be monsters, Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow’s heed the positive of creative beauty which are adorned across the musical dialogue of expression and the traditional sound of the British pastoral, bringing it to a climax of the folk scene entwinned within the mystery of the song of the seas. This exquisitely drawn map, with its pointed directions of The Yellow Handkerchief, Kellaways, Flame of Fire, the excellent Hard Times Of Old England and The Sheepfold, is one that the Pill Pilots of a thousand years tradition have intricately put together, and like an ancient scroll of text, only the brightest and knowledgeable understand the meaning of its message.
Art which has been led to safety through the storms that come with violent and destructive waters, that bypass the shallow, is to be admired, and for Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow, the Pill Pilots salute their own navigational expertise.
Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow’s Pill Pilots will be released, via Big Badger Records, on February 28th.
Ian D. Hall