Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We scatter dust to the wind when time has reached its end, when that faithful friend has left us and we wish to ensure that they travel onwards, that their force, their soul, will keep being part of the world and all it can envision beneath its wings.
To chase that dust with songs, with melodies, tunes, and maybe the modern hymn like structure that appeals to the contemporary mind, is the right of us all, for life is a finer example of existence when we have a soundtrack attached to it, whether by our own design, or placed before us as a packaged and rounded effect by a musician well versed in expanding on a theme and whose music is a palliative and soothing tone in which the trauma of the dust is turned into dreams and sweet memory before the loss.
Following on from Songs Of The Sea and Songs From The Wheel, Ian David Green brings the trilogy full circle in his tremendous release, Songs To The Dust.
The thematic seems obvious, from the sea we came, the wheel showed our true intent and humanity, and in the end we are dust in search of a groove in which to settle; and yet there is nothing about settling or making do in this final outing of the trilogy at hand, it rises with the tide, it gives way to the emotions the listener feels without judgment, and the sound and the poetic voice play tantalisingly on the heart of the matter that each track entails.
From the outset, and cunningly, auspiciously, kicked off by the album title track of Songs To The Dust, the album reassures with a calming pulse, and as tracks such as Kostya Got A Gun, Rosaline, the excellent The Last Long Dance Of Bonnie And Clyde, the prophetic The Boatman, and Your Love Was Too Big For The Sky all weave together as though they are stamped and engrained demonstrations of the finality of an exercise in life; and it is heartening t know that the progression of the tale mirrors that of life, from cradle to the grave we are capable and ensured a song in which to love.
Ian David Green’s assured pace and belief in his trilogy engage the listener, and as we allow Songs To The Dust to fill the air, we are granted a kind of peace denied many.
Ian D. Hall