Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The sound of music is rarely anything but generous, if it is given permission to slide into the soul like first teenage love into the mind, it can be both pure, and exotic, the harvest it offers is enough to have you reminiscing at all times on its influence, how it makes you choose sides, how it ails you, how it lifts you to places that you never would imagine existing; and all that comes between is proof that it’s emotional resonance is all that is required to take you back…Back Where We Are, back to belief.

Belief can be a fickle emotion when it offers temptation in the guise of beauty, and yet it is always apt to hold on fast to it lest the emotion is spirited away down a dark alley and robbed of all its possessions, of all its good and faithful credence; best to admire when attraction flutters its heart your direction and be thankful that it has chosen your ears in which to impart tales with a voice of an angel and the instrument that even the devil finds difficult to ignore.

Back Where We Are sees Mike Ryan step forward once more, take a well-deserved bow, and with a flourish that is both mindful and full of humility, showcase an album that digs deep onto the emotional response of belief and refuses to let go, accepts that Time might have other ideas, and slowly and surely teaches the instrument of our daily debt to the universe that it has a superior, that Time may control our days, but it has no hold on our hearts.

Across tracks such as Honeymoon, Close The Sky, The Morning After, the excellent Eurydice, the pull of And Picked The Daisies Fine, and the album’s title track, Back Where We Are, Mike Ryan’s observation is one of a fine weaved tale spread over a series of emotions, indiscretions, forthright views, all placed under the realm of passion, and each track is a reminder that the journey is for the most part metaphorical, travelling without moving perhaps, but nonetheless discovering and exploring anyway.

To have Mike Ryan once more release new music is a symbol of that generosity that music provides, an open-hearted release that this performer that will weave into the listener’s appreciation from the very start. Stirring and bountiful, Mike Ryan returns with pleasure.

Ian D. Hall