Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To please people all the time is an impossibility, but as the phrase might go, you can always do your best to please me.
To reach out to the individual as well as the crowd can be exhausting, you either go all out to place empathy within the soul of the person who even in a congregation feels the excess of loneliness, or you stare down the eyes of all and ignore the potential to assemble a deep-seated wish to be able to have your art loved and admired by millions.
It is an artform in itself, to be able to place your artistic ambition in both camps of the equation is one that showcases the greatness, the longevity of your performance and of your writing, and yet some will be categorised as nothing more than a Cardboard Box Beatle, a padded packet of Pink Floyd, or a reduced sachet of the Rolling Stones, and for many that comes in every genre possible, the chance to lower the influence of many by decrying their ability, their presence, or even their truth, their own artistic view.
While we arguably all admire The Beatles, or at least understand the appeal that has taken them from nights at The Cavern and Litherland Town Hall to continued world music domination for the last 60 years, we forget the subtly, the insight that the individual can bestow on even a small group of people; not a niche effect, but a noticeable groove that encompasses a type of strongbox poetry, of authentic belief, and the knowledge that to be all things to all people is a lesson in reducing your own personal mantra.
It is with an eye and ear of self-deprecation that Brian Bordello names the third and final acoustic solo session album Cardboard Box Beatle, for the musician who is arguably one of the most unique in Liverpool, touches people’s minds that defies the idea that you have to sell millions in order to be noticed, and that even if you stay in a place where you might find that the wider world never knows your name, you remain resolute to being authentic, a monolith of respectable punk.
Brian Bordello plays not to the gallery, but to the legitimate lover of expression, of personal message, and across tracks such as the opener Yes, I Am The New Nick Drake, Flowerchild, The True Meaning Of Love, Any Room In Your Life For A Song And Dance Man, Salamanda Fruit Fly, and Cat Food On The Floor, the astuteness of his craft shows through, the sense of the genuine article always being seen and never hidden away in exchange for riches, plaudits or likes on a fickle social media is refreshing, is influential.
Too many desire to be the next big thing, to appear on television shows, to have every word hung on to as if nothing else matters, what is needed more than ever is the authentic, the ability to believe in the Cardboard Box Beatle who proclaims an undeniable truth, and in Brian Bordello and the finale of trilogy that has been immensely revealing, the real is more validated, it is received with commitment.
Ian D. Hall