Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is a truth in our voice when we find we have nothing to say about the town we may live in or the place where we were born; it is the lack of endorsement, the ringing chimes of indifference which insists that boredom and inertia has coloured our view, or that the memory of the place is such that it the last place on Earth that you would send someone to, maybe to save them from the damage done to your soul. A Town Called Nothing, a village of the damned, a city of unearthly delights.

The solo debut is territory all of its own, the town is left behind for a while, the sense of comfortable declaration is forgotten, and instead, maybe without us knowing, the references to the town’s secret alleyways, its guarded entrances and confidences hidden so deep, start to come alive, it is after all what leads us to make art when we are away from that place we call home, for we can see through the perimeter fence, and the affect it has on us; from nurturing first steps to the moment we stand alone on our own stage, it has held us in its hands.

Such is the occasion found for Laura-Mary Carter in her debut solo offering, A Town Called Nothing, that the heavy-duty ideal found in her work Blood Red Shoes, does not only give way to a deeper sense of anguish, of contemplation, it rises with formal grandeur, with grand scale and feeling. 

The mini album, which was produced by the cool Ed Harcourt, who also adds his intricate vision on bass and piano, and who was joined by the Eagles of Death Metal drummer Jorma Vik, sees the six tracks become part of a narrative, perhaps not consciously, but under its skin, the letting loose and unravelling of certain themes and motions carrying her voice deeper into the psyche of the listener, and as Blue’s Not My Colour, Signs, Town Called Nothing, Better On My Own, The City We Live, and Ceremony all hoist themusic vehicle to the spot where new observations can be made, so those motions become clearer, as though headlights have been turned on full beam and exposing the shadows for what they truly are – times of discovery and passions curtailed.

Perhaps the truth should make it known that it is not inertia or discord that makes us dismiss where we come from, but the fear of how much of your soul in embedded within its border and history, that the reason you don’t exclaim with wild jubilation the belief of your association is that your blood, your soul, and your past all belong there, and that the story of your connection is far from over.

A Town Called Nothing, an album that shouts its greatness for all to hear. 

Ian D. Hall