Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is a question mark in the minds of many who believe that the melancholic sound of an artist is akin to the cry of the desperate and fruitless of those to whom only dust balls run through the otherwise vacant space, concerned only with the emotional luxury of the moment; the long term and sensitive sound is not for them, but for all others it is a staggering appraisal of their own brief lives.

It is a Revelation of the times that we must admit to ourselves that whilst pleasure is an absolute conviction, it can also be a jailor if not adhered to with the knowledge that it is only possible through the acceptance of suffering, and no matter if it is a deep and abiding urging of melancholy that strides down the path of introduction, or that of a slight indifference to the day, it makes the highs even finer, it gives a greater depth of beauty in which to explore the emotions. Nobody should sail through life without feeling the pain that existence offers if they want to declare love from the highest mountain.

For Leif Vollebekk the outcome of Revelation is a response to the world as it was arguably once, and how we now need to re-establish our place within it, the sense of loss we have all been put through is one of grave concern, and yet the exposure to the light sees this new and complete album bring surprises and eye openers, but it also offers solace in every track and nuanced delivery.

Across tracks such as Southern Star, Surfer’s Journal, False-Hearted Lover, Elijah Rose, Sunset Boulevard Expedition, and the sublime Moondog, Leif Vollebekk pushes back against the damning nature of the lies of over exaggerated content, instead it commits to drawing out the poison of our languishing society, of delighting in a line being scorched in the sands and proclaiming, ‘no more’.

Revelation is a concrete admission of lament, and yet it is the point in which we can restart the narrative, to give the world a canvas in which redraw life in a way that acknowledges melancholy is a greater state of mind to exist within than falsehoods and misrepresentations fabricated by those to whom see life as a game in which they can ridicule the sensitive and the complex of thought. 

Ian D. Hall