Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
It may seem flippant to suggest, for some it will be a preposterous notion, but it arguably a truth that only art can save the world, or at least civilisation as far as humanity is concerned, and whilst we are at a precipice of Time, hanging not just by a thread, but by our fingernails on collective sanity and our anger, we have the opportunity to enthuse others to a place where art in all its forms connects in ways that other areas of life are afraid to tap into.
Our house is on fire, our world has been mistreated to the point where several sessions with a therapist wouldn’t even scratch the surface of the multiple traumas it has faced, and yet art, taking a moment to breathe and not be forced to keep digging in the dirt, is more than Hanging On A String, it is the rope on which we can climb to safety to a higher level.
The heavy blues has seen many heroes, but Steve Hill has been one to exemplify the genre’s grassroots and its originality, its piercing outlook, and its anger, the damage to which has often held the music back and yet in the musician’s latest release, Hanging On A String, the sense of passionate fury is overwhelmingly cool.
When an artist declares that the package you are holding in your hand, or admiring from behind a velvet rope as you rub shoulders with the so called great and the good, and the true heroes of society often ignored because they are hanging on the string with you, is the finest offering they have created yet…believe them, for it is not a humble brag or a condescending tone utilised, it is a truth, and by heavens, even after all that Mr. Hill has seen and achieved, the concept album he didn’t realise he was producing is everything and all things to all listeners.
A master of his own accord and musical destiny, Steve Hill brings honour and depth to songs such as Devil’s Handyman, the understandable resentment and wrath in World Gone Insane, You Know Who, Turned To Dust, and the abiding pilgrimage to the lengthy epic in the cover of the Doors’ track When The Music’s Over, the Canadian maestro seeks salvation for all, and offers it freely, unreservedly, and with poignant insight.
An utterly desirable album, Steve Hill is the provider of the rope in which we must be seen to climb, to ascend, and free ourselves from the enraging disaster of an artless world to come.
Steve Hill releases Hanging On A String on 1st November.
Ian D. Hall