Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The focus has once more landed with a critical thump on the idea of what may constitute heritage, what blood runs through our veins, and the question some take with Umbridge, and others celebrate as they embrace all the possibilities and truths of human existence that come with it. To discuss race and family in a civilised manner, away from the ghouls and the ones who see the subject as a chance to set the world afire is a rare opportunity to truly understand how we came to be, and one that sits at the heart and ties of Rain Perry and her latest recording A White Album.
We must embrace all that made us, family, environment, all that has come under discussion in recent memory and especially in the last couple of years, and the belief held by some that one race is better than another, a memory of disgust that some will find exposing of beliefs held across history and the storms created by dangerous and willing evil people.
One such question certain people must ask themselves now is what it means to be ourselves, that what we think of as family may not be true, that in what we hope is a more common basis of multicultural pleasure, of cohesion, of unity and interrelations, the old ideas, tired, dated, wrong, must be consigned to history, and for some in more ethnically unbalanced countries we must ask that pertinent question, brave, but required, of what it means now to display a rhetoric of what it means to be adamant of being seen as one colour.
Celebrate the individual, raise the roof for collective responsibility, acknowledge that blood is just a by-product of being alive, and hold account if the system becomes narrow, constricting, controlling, Rain Perry holds an answer in her hands as she seeks to address what it means today in the recording of her new album, A White Album.
The calibre of guests on an any album is telling of the direction taken, the sense of involved collaboration a must, and with Rain Perry utilising the talents of Mark Hallman, Akina Adderley, Taylor Hallman, Andrew Hardin, Mikael Jorgensen, Virginia Kron, Ben Lee, André Moran, Kerenza Peacock, the Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus, BettySoo, and Martin Young, Rain Perry has weaved together the blood of family, the human family, the one that is most important and the true adoption of feeling in us all, that underneath the skin, we are truly one people and if we have the opportunity to dispel and dispense with the disguised devilry of privilege, then we must do so.
Across tracks such as The Money, Yarddogs/Morning Dew, the excellent Indian Hill, Ohio, 1967, What’s Wrong With You, and Lady Of The Harbour, Rain Perry does not hold back, the beauty of her performance is enlightening, inspiring, she asks pertinent questions, she offers hope in her voice, and especially of her reading of the great Stevie Wonder’s Visions, the melding of humanity is perfectly driven and embraced.
What could be considered as an act of courage is simply just a normal question of how we accept that some who hold the gene of resentment must be eventually cut loose, that their way of seeing the world is outdated, and that in the end, as perfectly observed by the addition of the Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus, we must hold all with honour and speak of such things, for how else do we learn to be better.
Rain Perry’s A White Album is released on April 15th on Precipitous Records.
Ian D. Hall