Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We need humour more than ever, we must embrace word play, we should demand to see the absurd in the actions of leaders and wannabes and be able to ridicule them without once ever thinking we might be taken to task for daring to laugh at their decisions, but most of all we should be able to laugh at ourselves, to ridicule the ego and deflate our own self-importance, the self-pity of grandeur; however whilst this should be the case it should never be done with cruelty in mind, for we can amuse without ever being abusive, we can laugh without ever dragging our own minds into a realm of the bleak and the dull.
Humour is the last bastion of the free mind, and if used correctly can be liberating, redeeming, even therapeutic, and in that therapy, we can find liberty to be ourselves, to choose the path of enlarging the absurd and owning the beauty of life in one sweeping vocal movement, one in which the Safe House becomes the perfect fishing hole for unrestricted joy.
Recorded in their Arkansas studio, Trout Fishing In America’s Keith Grimwood and Ezra Idlet release their latest album, their 25th full length recording, Safe House, and own the vibrancy of expression with a joy of knowing of what will hit the listener with unreserved delight.
Not everything in life should be treated as if it is a joke, but it is within our nature to prick the pomposity of a situation, and to shine a light of frankness in the well that the fear of uncontrollable world events cowers. We can’t change or alter the course of every madman’s rage, but we can treat it with performance, we must see the precondition of totalitarianism and strangle it, cut it off from its blood supply; and as tracks such as Knock Me Down, Don’t Be Callin’, the excellent Barbed Wire Boys, the absolute verbal generosity of We’ll Always Have Ardmore, Where’s That Dog Gone Now?, and Freeze, Trout Fishing In America’s Safe House is not only continuation of experience and passion, it is the acknowledgement that safe places are only as secure as the minds that embrace them, and in Safe House that security is absolute, the genuine nature of rationale and humour is confidently detailed and enjoyed.
Trout Fishing In America reach out and offer spare rod to sit and fish for freedom in the lake outside their home, for they recognise we all need to sit out of the world occasionally and feel the fresh air of new music that doesn’t preach, but is eminently persuadable and gorgeously entertaining.
Ian D. Hall