Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In times of darkness, we have two meaningful choices, we can either comfortably let the stagnation erode us from the inside out, leaving the shell but not the will of the person we once were, or arguably we can embrace the opportunity to address the situation, confront it, and even if we fail to solve the issue, then at least we will have shown our humanity for what it is, one of absolute daring and adventure.

We know that all is not as it should be, not in our own lives, not in the great beyond, we are tired, straining to understand and comprehend the urgency to which the warning signals have been flashing away with increasing fervour, but still, we shrug our shoulders, we knowingly nod our heads sagely and with bravado in our voices insist, Everything’s Wrong, But It’s Alright.

The fear of fear can be contagious, but so can rationale and pragmatism, we isolate due to the on-going world situation, which in many ways the debut album from Bobhowla – Everything’s Wrong, But It’s Alright, perfectly finds the right method of attack to be conscious of sowing seeds of pleasure as well as damage control. A backdrop to our own thoughts and issues since we began to realise the problem, a year unlike any other in our collective lifetimes, and which we finally grasp that we are not the kings of this world, but to which others blindly insist that all is well, that we carry on regardless in the same awful fashion that we did before.

Through treasures and tracks such as the opening dynamic of Fear Of The Same, 1963, Music Keeps Calling, the excellent Out Of Sight (Not Out Of Mind), and When Love Stops A-Lovin, Bobhowla’s Howard Doupe, John Brindle and Graham Fletcher-Hill take their former acoustic base sound into the grateful arms of the electronic Folk-pop beat arena and watch it evolve before theirs and the listener’s eyes in to one of sheer maturity and resolute determination.

In times of darkness, we can embrace the fear and see it revolve like a spinning top, blurring time in a wheel of blurs or distorted impressions, or we demand change, that we acknowledge that everything’s wrong, but it’s alright, because we are better than we are told we are, we have the tune of the universe to guide us. 

Ian D. Hall