Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

How do we view Home, hopefully our experiences are such that is a place we can look back upon with a certain degree of love, even happiness, but it does depend on what we actually class as home, is it this place we call Earth, a certain town or village where our memories were formed and our reflexes and reflections were honed, or is it in the mind, the one place that is surely ours, where we can be at peace and dream of the beautiful and the brave.

Home is where the heart lays, and where the mind is at ease, and in listening to Scottish guitar and composer, Joe Robson, the influence of several genres bind tightly to bring together a sense of serenity, a piece of interaction that holds steady and true in an album that explores the meaning and belief of Home.

Promoting the sound laid down by Joe Robson, the quality of musicianship is enhanced further by the addition of the likes of Seamus Blake, Matt Carmichael, Adam Jackson, Michael Murray, Charlie Stewart, Ali Watson, Dan Brown, Harris Playfair, Doug Hough-Stewart, and Stu Brown in various forms of delivery and across instruments ranging from tenor and alto sax to fiddle and piano, as well as a selection of harmonious drum beats and patterns that regale, and a double bass whose heartbeat resonates across each timeless serenade unveiled by the musical author of the piece.

Across tracks such as Brotherhood, Seven Sisters, Searching For Home, Golden Bell, and We Won’t Leave, the luxury of instrumental harmony frames the idea with expansive reasoning, a debate settled, and as Scottish and Nordic Folk, the elemental force of Rock, and the grandness of Neo-Classical fill the air, so the listener is drawn back to that one place where home mattered, to once more envisage with longing the streets in which they played, the company they kept and where the heart beat with passion and dreams.

An album of intricacy and meaning, Joe Robson’s Home is a palace of treasure waiting to be unearthed.

Ian D. Hall