Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Ahead of his new album being released, Liverpool’s Shadow Captain’s introduction of April Moon is to surely be considered, timely, focusing on renewal and one that understands implicitly the relief that a new spring moon can have on the soul in what has been an intolerable period of darkness.
There is something largely spiritual about the heavens when the northern hemisphere starts returning to lighter days, the moon seems to take on the glow of the healer and the protector after time in the dark, and so it is to art, that all-encompassing compassionate guide, that the moon’s presence seems to add so much hope and beauty within.
And it is to beauty, to the sincere thought and application of song-writing that Shadow Captain’s, otherwise known as Stuart Todd, April Moon stands out poetically, lyrically and with the immensity of the spirit of the musician weaved constantly throughout this single track to which the latest album takes its name.
Not only is there a craving, a longing of company and memory wishing to be spoken in the track, there is a harmony, an expression of looking beyond the static and stagnation to which we have all too earnestly become accustomed to, and whilst gently spoken and sung, urges to reach out with once more with passion and heart and be heard.
It is in the gentleness of the guitar, the slow unpicking of the love that the Shadow Captain wishes to impart, and the ambiguity of whether the receiver of the words is a discerning, but emotionally distant woman, or indeed that reflector of the sun’s rays hanging impossibly in the sky, the Moon herself. Such ambiguity resonates in certainty, for it immerses itself into sonnets of old and gives them a 21st Century counterpart into which such declarations of adoration can be fraught with danger and cold response; just as the Moon herself can offer a path of illumination but is also capable of deceiving all who sail by her waxing and waning soul.
A stunning way to introduce the listener to the forthcoming album, Shadow Captain once more weaves a tale of human emotion with honest reflection.
Ian D. Hall