Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The intricacy of creating a series of Paper Ships that will float downstream and survive, indeed that will install hope, colour and pleasure in those that line the passage of water between release and embarkation, is all down to the design, the seaworthiness, and the captain who steers the gathering ships to the harbour of the well-received and the honourable.

The Paper Ships that appear from the horizon are often more in tune with the idea of melancholic beauty than those clad in iron, and which carry destruction and conquest, that transport passengers and prisoners of conscious to far off places to which they never return to home soil. The paper ships carry dreams, they whisper of the unexpected return of playfulness and imagination, and in the hands of Kete Bowers, they are the creative vision that anchor the listener to the haven of keenly observed lyrics and the waterfronts where the sails of fancy can be seen from miles around.

It is in those sails that Kete Bowers has launched his album, and it is one of extremely superb quality, depth and persuasion, an album that takes tracks such as There Was A Time, the superb Ghosts, A Town With No Cheer, the emotive A Fine Day To Leave, and the finale of the crushingly beautiful You Stole My Joy, and leads them to the water’s edge, and having decked them out with instructions, with a crew that entails Tom Juhas, Josh Finlayson, Aron Goldstein, Michael Johnston, Michael Timmins and Peter Timmins, it is more than fair weather that will see this album make its voyage unhindered, it is the expertise behind it that will see it crowned and launched with champagne.

A journey of opportunity for the listener, an artist to which they might have been neglectful of, but to which this album offers much in terms of enjoyment and style. Paper Ships is more than a fleeting fancy, it is the album to which great armadas are built around.

Ian D. Hall