Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In the midst of the eternal grumble by those who didn’t make the most of their youth, to be 16 Again is an emotional declaration that we can mostly all agree with as we look to the moments where our mistakes are magnified, and our missed opportunities regretted to the point of exhaustion.

Yet it is under closer scrutiny that we see that Dot Dash have taken a different ideal to proclaim the vow as a reminder that their place and time has garnered affection, has not just been an ambition to renew their promise, and in homage to the Buzzcocks single, 16 Again is a reminder of a past whilst most certainly facing forward as the understanding that in aging growth is never lost.

A greatest hits without necessarily being well known, appreciated but perhaps unfamiliar outside of their native fan base, and yet once you dig through the archive on offer, once you understand the pride in performance, the level of interest is pushed, encouraged to believe in the soul that may have allowed itself that, as all artists fear, it had lost the fight to inspire a collection of people outside of a fan base collective.

An album that includes tracks from their previous recordings, and as songs such as Trip Over Clouds, Unfair Weather, Holy Garland, the pleasure invoked by the demonstratively titled (Here’s To) The Ghosts Of The Past, There And Back Again Lane, Flowers, and the cover of Television Personalities’ Jackanory Stories reassert themselves to the position of furious and undeniable beat and the immaculate reconstruction of life.

No hits… and yet each one does exactly what they should do, be a triumph of expression and a smash in the senses of the listener, a knockout for the Washington D.C. trio. Thankfully we are not defined in the end by ethereal success but how we are held in the hearts of those we touch, and for that Dot Dash are assured to be 16 Again all the time and full of hope and promise.

Ian D. Hall