Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
An album created with the intention of showcasing the voice and lyric with just one instrument aiding its delivery is a force to be reckoned with. Such is the confidence of the writer that the message will be acknowledged and understood without the listener being overladen with the sense of the sweeping through each instruments place as it attempts to magnify and highlight, to empathise the sound rather than the human expression of timbre control and unwavering faith.
Beans On Toast is a wordsmith of ever-increasing repute, the near annual launch of albums, the musician has again challenged himself to produce a work of art that is poignant, witty, and one that does not rely on the sometimes overwrought scenario of too much production, and in Wild Goose Chasers the belief grows again as each track focuses on a difference rather than more of the same.
The tracks, the musician himself calls them hymns and for that he is absolutely correct upon as they praise in a pagan fashion of human’s place within the structure of the universe and nature, are joined by the only instrument, the feeling of pace and place supplied by the ancient piano on hand and the sheer cool of Matt Millership who brings the keys to a sense of adulation; and as Faith In The Moon, The Midas Touch, the superb Boring Dystopia and Myths + Legends, and the seismic The Glorious Fool all flow with the narration of a poetic genius, so the lifting of admiration is found in that one voice and one instrument working in harmony.
The wild goose chase that is modern living, the perpetual requirement to see life as a competition in which the winner receives the garland of a dying Earth as its plaything is a sentiment and an action that we should no longer be entertaining, we have gambled our souls to become Wild Goose Chasers, and the golden egg laid by one of these waterfowl does not repair the damage done.
An album of difference and yet one that keeps the customary intelligent observation and everyday man in the sight of the fan; Wild Goose Chasers is evolution in harmony and personal philosophy, and it sounds sublime.
Ian D. Hall