Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Too often we write the songs, paint the pictures and recite the down at heel poems which reflect our own imagined lives, the sense of gentle conceit that surrounds us as we imagine that our lives are somehow worthy of other’s gaze and perception, of their interest; occasionally we might also draw the life of another into our artistic subconscious and present a part, a detail of their story, to allow their memory to live on after their death.
To dedicate an entire album to the memory of another cannot only be seen as gracious, of being in tune with the way that person suffered with the hand the universe and fortune dealt them, it can be cathartic, a kind of liberation from the intensity of feeling that comes from the belief of guilt and the therapeutic realisation that in retrospect that the anger you hold is part of the release, The Furious Seasons of remorse giving way to ably sing their song with fondness for the person, and the concern of heartbreak when you say their name.
A concept album in all but name, the tracks that convey the seriousness of The Furious Seasons’ new album, La Fonda, deal with death of a friend through the ravages of alcohol, of how, even when we are not involved with that person’s decision to slide easily into the liquid of their choice, guilt will hunt us down and make us suffer for the way we could not help them, it will be a plague of emotional distress, to which at least one aid to recovery is the ability to talk about it, to sift through the conquering blame and remain on friendly terms with the past.
Through another’s vision of you can the world get to know your song, and as tracks such as Figure It Out, I Was An Actor, Statistically Speaking, the lament of Your Irish Funeral and the soul exposing Slide Into Sadness, La Fonda grips the mind of the listener, makes them embrace a memory of a ghost they might have once known in flesh and blood and to remember them, to deal with any loss they might have suffered. The reason of the cathartic interlude is not only to see their life as it was, but to force you to move on, to smile at their life rather than being bequeathed the bitterness they bore at the end to themselves, to life, and the hand that was dealt.
An album of respect, La Fonda is gracious to a fault.
The Furious Seasons release La Fonda on August 7th.
Ian D. Hall