Linda Moylan: The Fool. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The artist’s control is paramount when it comes to insisting that they do everything possible to complete the vision that they have played out in their head a thousand times, to deny the creator the image, the sound, the farsighted concept is to be seen surely as a crime against unique talent, as a complaint to The Fool who forbids and the Jester who rejects.

Linda Moylan’s vision is to be lauded, and as she follows on from her acclaimed 2021 album The Merchant, the vision explained through the delving into her heritage and childhood experiences in and around the sprawling East End of the England capital as part of being of a London/Irish family, that fulfilment of bringing the hardiness and stringent contentment of her life into the view of the listener, of the critic, of her own background, is not only built with truth, it is authentic to the point of natural spirited belief.

Linda Moylan captures the essence and effort placed by those who migrate to a world beyond their shores and give the community, the area, a sense of newness, an ability to keep changing, to alter as Time insists it should.

The Fool is an album of maturity, it is a disposition of creativity that is generational, and with appearances by musicians such as Ian Montague, Greg Ireland, Phil Beer, Sil Fiore, and Rebecca Mileham, Linda Moylan’s attitude towards her craft is honour bound and in many ways a testament to the service of the self-assured; and as tracks such as Burn Me Blue, Shadowboxing, Roaming, Dutch Houses, the sheer cool of Venus In The Dirt, and The Green Fields Of France the lifeforce, the realism, a counter culture of imagination is a well-travelled attitude and the artist in this case deserves to be thought of as nothing less than authentic.

The Fool is in this case a genius, it is an album of attitude but with the calm persuasion of love woven in between each beat of the heart; and it is beautiful.

Linda Moylan releases The Fool on September 6th via Talking Elephant Records.

Ian D. Hall