Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The promise that humanity will never have to face the flood again seems to be fading, the last sign of an uncaring world has been played out, and we are all to blame; what is needed is a miracle, the appearance, the remainder that we are here to care and to appreciate each more than we have been led to believe is possible by those who wear suits to meetings and make every detail depend on cost and value. What is needed in these dark times, is a Double Rainbow, the extra assurance supplied by each person that if we must flood, then it is not by our own hands that the waters and tears overwhelm us.
A Double Rainbow signals transformation, a change in attitudes, belief, a structure to which we have become accustomed to, and in the in-depth recording set out by Ian Roland & The Subtown Set, it also finds a way to open the mind to a new philosophy, that to be pioneering does not mean abandoning the past, rather it should be shared, the tectonic shift of what has been going hand in hand with what could be; no illusion, no pretence or make believe, just a reality in which we need to make sure we are here to further, to enhance and never betray the fact that we are here to protect, not to be self-serving.
From the opening heartbeat of The Valley and through tracks such as In The Darkness, Colour Me In, Day Became You, the exceptional Shooting Star and Gravity Inside, Ian Roland, Simon Yapp and Jade Woodhouse, alongside special guests Brione Jackson, Nick Van Vlanderan and Ruby Rose, the music is as cool as Folk can ever be but it also reveals a state of anarchy, a rhythm of going against the grain of the last century, not wanting to be part of a system that has desecrated and pillaged the skies and the land, but the revolution of wanting to be better, to hold that Double Rainbow up as a signal of intent.
The result of such an act is there to be heard and experienced and for Ian Roland & The Subtown Set, there is no finer act of contrition, of paving the way for others to follow. Harmonious, creative and seductive, Double Rainbow is the aural signal of transformation we have been dying to hear.
Ian Roland & The Subtown Set release Double Rainbow on February 28th.
Ian D. Hall