Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The evocative nature that captures serenity when we glimpse perhaps through train windows that idly go past an untouched memory of what Britain’s south east landscape was famous for, is a timely reminder that not everything in life has to be littered with the fast and the furious, that taking time is a virtue, that surveying the scene of windmills turning and hop gatherers working is not a bygone mystery, but very much a part of gives its people the sense of a continuance, an order to reflect rather than always consume.
Windmills, for those that see the structures as timeless, an act of calmness in ever changing technology driven world, are the point in which what we might perceive as silent are actually the resulting and necessary poise in which we derive a cleaner energy, the sound is pushed effortlessly, and as with certain arrangements of music, can lead the mind to a place of comfortable composure and stillness of the heart.
The serenity of listening to Jacqui Dankworth is forever held tight, the sense of musical peace lays the body into a state of cool unreserved joy, but one willing to keep the mellow burning undaunted and unafraid to smile at the world rather than shake an angry fist against it, and yet knowing you are still making a positive difference to the time and the place you inhabit.
In Windmills, arranged by Charlie Wood, and with Oli Hayhurst and Ralph Salmins performing on bass and drums respectively, and also featuring the B.B.C. Big Band conducted by Julian Siegal, and The Bedazzle Strings led by Jaqueline Shave, Jacqui Dankworth is fuelled to the stirring heights of release once more in a collection of songs, of contended lullabies for the adult mind, that take the mind on a journey of self-reflection and contentment, to a quiet place filled with big songs and large hearts.
Across tracks such as Baubles, Bangles & Beads, On Raglan Road, Will You Wait For Me, I Can Let Go Now, and the brilliance of interpretation in Stephen Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns, and the fascination of The Windmills Of Your Mind, the crafted layers seek understanding and are graciously sought out by the listener as they are once more given space by a member of one of Britain’s foremost families of music.
The environment of the music is colossal, it is elegance poured out of a bottle and into the realm of the dreamlike beauty that we all truly seek as we see from a distance that which reminds us of better, unfettered, and illustrious days; Windmills is a collection of heartbeats once more given life.
Ian D. Hall