Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
A Little Bit More, the Dickensian call out for those who understand they still need nourishment from a valuable source or those that aren’t quite willing to let go just yet of what gives them pleasure.
The final act recorded is such that an audience may call for the actors and even the author to return to the stage, the poet being beckoned to perform one final favourite for the crowd, the rejected lover hopelessly imploring for one last kiss or heated, passionate argument, it is the act of continuing the dream, one that we want to live forever.
It is in the thought of forever that we must understand that When The Time Is Right we must allow the performer to take a final bow and leave the stage, after all the music will continue, discoveries will be made, memories will be forged in steel, but Time itself will gently provide the artist the moment of rest they need, they deserve.
The finale of a career is filled with such memories and in beauty, in our hearts they reside in between the sound of the tick and the tock, the moments in which magic can be wielded, harnessed and even employed to drive home the message that all that came before was leading to this moment, a bow of grace, a smile from the wings, and a set of songs that cause the heart to grow ever fonder; something that the much loved John Cee Stannard would no doubt have loved as the final album from the recently passed musician, comes to the attention of those that adored his music, style and humanity.
Written during a song-writing course during August 2019, When The Time Is Right is full of sentiment, of longing, but it is also one that isn’t displaying a need to set down righted wrongs, instead it is an honest and delightful vision given the ability to imagine, a very human response, an absolute mortal reaction to seeing the beauty in what you are witnessing.
Across songs such as Biscuits At Two, Late In The Evening, Devil Behind Closed Doors, Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms, the excellent Upstate New York and the sincerely held belief that inhabits the soul of the album’s title track, When The Time Is Right, the knowledge that John Cee Stannard’s name will continue to inflame the passions of the listener, that his stance of truth and justice will forever be linked to the incredible catalogue of music that he created, that is the real beauty which sees this album produce such an emotional response in the listener’s own heart.
When The Time Is Right we may exit the stage, but few will ever have held the audience’s heart in the way that John Cee Stannard has done.
Ian D. Hall