Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
A modern day Pinkie Brown could be imagined to be walking the streets of the town on the Wirral, hat strategically placed in a position of authority, a crisp suit that would cost the wearer more than a week’s wages, if he had to pay for it, and for all purposes the man who ran the seaside town with a fist of iron…this is the wonderful sense of power that strides through the objectively superb and musically thrilling new album by Ian McNabb, New Brighton Rock.
The music is no stranger to the wistful nostalgic, it is the Film Noir in melody form, a man in harmony with himself but underscored all that he has seen, and whilst Pinkie Brown, the criminal at the heart of one Britain’s post war literature classics may believe he rules the roost over the Wirral peninsula, his nemesis, the guitar slung hero armed with composition and memory, is out to remind him that it is to the artist that such beauty will standfast and be the one to take down the egregious sense of damage caused by the faceless and the tormenting suits.
Ian McNabb’s continued presence is always to be welcomed, like many he is a voice of Liverpool, he is a declaration in a country that has aggressively lost its mind in many quarters, and as the album’s opener, Hamilton Square, introduces itself to the listener, so the reckoning with the suits is on hand. For the sense of meanness those suits in life portray may be stomach churning, they are nothing but bullies who deserve the unrelenting sounds of cool and grace, of a series of instruments capturing the fight in all its glory and which leads to an album of sincere finery and taste.
Across tracks such as Outrider, Salmon Butties, the fantastic Don’t Shoot The Wounded, the heart pounding lyrical poetry of Officer Of The Watch, and the smile inducing Interstellar Vehicle Had Landed In Port Sunlight, Ian McNabb has given the listener an album that is its authority, never mind the suit of the oppressor, what is the truth of the day is that the artists can, and will, have their say as they look on the scene and view from the height of New Brighton Rock.
An absolute classic, fierce, melancholily beautiful, haunting, understanding of the times it has been born into; New Brighton Rock is the lynch pin we must reach out to as we fight blandness and uncertainty in a world dominated by suits.
Ian D. Hall