Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

When we find that moment of pure genius, we should embrace it fully and without reservation.

We can fully understand what it is like to be on the cusp of outrageous brilliance, and even seeing genius in someone else is never beyond our grasp; but when it comes our own way, when the parade of virtuoso performance is acknowledged as coming from our own endeavours, we may be reluctant to nod in approval for fear of being appraised as arrogant, over confident that the feeling captured will last an eternity; instead we should thank the stars and shout with damnation at the negative emotions, “Trying My Best (To Get Away From You)”.

To listen to John Jenkins as a performer is to know your soul has been gratified and touched…to put him aside the terrific David Nixon, Pippa Murdie, Denis Parkinson, Chris Jones, and Dave Orford, is the dream that comes with the succulent music of The James Street Band – a belief within a dream that does not let go easily.

In the latest single by John Jenkins and The James Street Band, Trying My Best (To Get Away From You), the measure of a song given its own predominance is overwhelming, a subtle nod to the mastery perhaps of legends such as an ear for Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison floating with majesty on the edge of the lyric and the creative beautiful sound; and yet never once being anything other than a team exemplifying the virtue of Merseyside.

The sense of Americana, the beauty of home spirit; it is as if there should have been in the mouth of the Mersey a replica of the words that are synonymous with Liberty Enlightening The World, “Bring me your words of home, for I shall set them free”, this is the point of any art, and one captured in all its glory in Trying My Best (To Get Away From You).

An outrageously sublime single, and if that is the case, just how great an album will follow from John Jenkins and The James Street Band.

Ian D. Hall