Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The news of a return can fill you with much needed hope, it can bring relief, gleaming positivity, and no matter what the situation, the right person or idea appearing on the horizon can be seen as a sign that life will begin again.
Underneath that sense of occasion though will always be a concern, there will always be a part of the mind and soul that feels trepidation, the question of what if it is not like before, what if in the time they have been away there has been a change, a shift in their perspective that we, as fans, as friends, can no longer adapt to. Everybody changes eventually, it is just how great a shift in depth and range that we see beyond the limitations we first though might appear and how much we appreciate, respect, The Joy Of The Return.
For Mancheste’s The Slow Readers Club, the only change is change itself, for this return, coming straight off the back of their impressive recent live release, is one of catching the certain memory the audience had come to love in the album Build A Tower, but also one that excites the muscles of trepidation, for the matchless understand that they must add more layers, subtle confessions and, sometimes to the detriment of the sound that was expected, some aspects of their the perceived personality that went into previous artistic endeavours.
No artist should stand still, they must embrace change, even if it may not sound like it, even if on the skin layer to which most people only register their approval, there must be something different, and whilst the glory of the evocative beams brightly across tracks such as Problem Child, No Surprise, All The Idols, Paris and Zero Hour, it is down to the atmosphere, the surrounding light that bites at the darkness we find ourselves in, that gives the band the change they have embraced.
If you can uplift a soul whilst making it feel that it is learning about the dangers of the world, of giving in to populism, of not researching those upon who prey on the confused, then The Joy Of The Return of the hero wielding gifts of self-awareness and conscious is to be encouraged and applauded; for The Slow Readers Club, it is another step towards enlightenment.
Ian D. Hall