Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Living legends are a hard commodity to explain, even more so in the explosion of talent that has come our way since the internet and its billions of users found ways to extoll the presence of anyone who can light up a screen with their various degrees of talent; the proof if ever needed that we can all be amazing, we can all be something extraordinary, it just takes one more ingredient, a quality of enigma that must shine brighter, must be so overwhelming, that it catches a moment in time with a ferocity that those who witness it will never be the same again.

There is a fire, a burning inferno that resides and consumes in the heart of Liverpool’s Pete Wylie, and across his time as arguably one of the most passionate supporters of his city, he has produced a catalogue of cool that truly shows that the heart as big as Liverpool is one to never disparage, to take for granted, and to respect at all times, and in the new release bearing his name, The Mighty Wah! : Teach Yourself Wah!- A Best Of, that fire blazes so far its heat can be felt to be sheer, almost volcanic, but absolutely stunning and dare it be said hypnotically beautiful.  

There is no doubting that the enormity of the recording and the choice of songs is one of almost forensic detail, not only for the depth of history that is entailed, a summing up perhaps of Liverpool’s resurgent dominance in the 1980s of pop music, but it also shows the purity of his thoughts, the need for expression, the elegance of the drama, but above it all it contains without argument two of the finest songs of the 1980s, two tracks in a gem field of vinyl that make you want to walk, to run towards that volcano in breath in the fumes in the hope that it will inspire.

In The Story Of The Blues and Sinful! The wall of sound hits the listener like a ton of bricks, it’s a shock of the comprehensive that sets others on the way to emulation, and in the sense of the magnificence to follow that started out for the musician at the back end of the 70s, his 90s anthem Heart As Big As Liverpool, Loverboy, Diamond Girl, and in the 2024 versions of Better Scream and Seven Minutes To Midnight, that volcano can be heard smashing against the atmosphere and sending the world’s ears ringing.

Pete Wylie is that legend, he may be reluctant to own that title, but to many who see Liverpool as the music capital of the U.K. he is the sword in the stone, the phoenix emerging from the fire, he is Wah! and nobody does it better.

Ian D. Hall