Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To bring art via a medium that you aren’t necessarily associated with to the fore is to be acknowledged as a success, as an achievement, and yet there will be those who suggest with jealous feelings barely hidden, that to have a skill is to be a master of all; for they will infer that no one is concerned, no friend is bothered, and that the person you want to impress, well She Don’t Want You at all.

Never be discouraged to flex the muscles of personal industry, never stop learning, perfecting, striving to be heard in whatever medium and with whatever instrument comes to hand; for this is the only way that you cannot be silenced. Being a master of many concepts allows your voice to continue when others try to shut you down.

For Gareth Heesom, the guitar may be a natural home, the outlet of his imagination and considerable talent, but as his latest single, She Don’t Want You, rings out, it seems there is a case, a large industrial one, hard wearing and with aural flexibility, that the piano is also a key provider of beauty which gives his poetic lyrics subtly of spirit and fierceness in delivery.

Imagine, a lifetime perfecting a sound, and then, for a while maybe, attacking the issue with a newfound and vigorous determination to add a complexity of learning to the approach. It is like asking Ginsberg or Dylan Thomas to step away from the poetic muse and sit for weeks on end in silence as they contemplate the novel form. It takes virtuosity to combine the talent of more than one medium, more than one instrument, and Gareth Heesom has produced a cool, free sounding response to those that knock the entertainer and musician in their quest to be better than they think they are.

Of course the public will always appreciate the movement, the belief that an artist must reach out and perhaps be uncomfortable for a while as they test their mental agility to the peak of their powers; and it with a wonder to our own Muse, that we may consider that she doesn’t want us, but in truth she cannot get enough, that she is with us every step of the way.

A fascinating single, a sense of poignancy and continuation in all its glory, the keys are a humming, the voice is as pleasurable as ever. Gareth Heesom’s latest single is a captivating reminder that we should not, must nt, place a person into one box only. Ian D. Hall