Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We should be grateful that we live in a time when the word mulligan can represent more than just a do over in a round of golf between friends.

An artist’s vision is to be respected, enjoyed, to be seen as the ultimate authority in the world they have created on canvas, in the darkness of the lonely hours afforded the writer as they gaze at the blankness of the screen and the pressure of bills mounting at their door, how they must envy the poet whose scribblings are never truly finished.

So it is to the musician whose life endeavours have seen their vision put to the public and rightly praised, but who in their own hearts perhaps saw it a different way, the studio and the engineers, the producers, the small talk heroes having their input and somehow the subtly once sought is altered, perhaps not by much, a moment here, a miniscule of expression there, but still moved away from the musician’s original idea, their plan, their mode of determination.

The chance to rectify that is a powerful emotion, a writer may see their novel altered, cut down, an emphasis changed, a character reduced, but they cannot, unless they are Stephen King, release the book in all its glory once more; not so with a musician, in the modern age they can revisit their work, their world, and recreate it just how they once imagined.

So, it is for Joe Pug, who after 15 years of living with the enormity and praise of his debut recording Nation of Heat, has taken the opportunity to re-imagine that first step into a whole new world and who now has the means to add, to deconstruct and rebuild the album in his own image; and a glorious one it is at that.

The sense of heartfelt groove was always at the heart of the original recording, and the heart has not changed in its appearance, but it has grown stronger, it joins the mind of the music in a type of revolution, a fight, a squaring up between ideals and comes out the victor…a champion who raises aloft the loser’s hand in acknowledgement of their own titan spirit and who understands everything that the former had bravely endowed.

It is in that grace and grit that Nation of Heat espouses, luxurious and sumptuous arrangements adorn the new king’s robe, and with contributions from The Killers’ Brandon Flowers, Derry Deborja, Carl Broemel, and Courtney Hartman, tracks that include Nobody’s Man, I Do My Father’s Drugs, Call It What You Will, and Speak Plainly, Diana, are given the truth of their conception, they take on a form of illustration of growth, of evolution, and it is beautiful to hear.

To be in the company of those who can alter their past and make it stronger, is to sit back and admire; and it is admiration that Joe Pug deserves fully and without hesitation of time.

Joe Pug’s Nation Of Heat -Revisited is out now and available from Loose Music.

Ian D. Hall