Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When you evoke the image of the universal you have to make sure you deliver the empathy and emotions of the eternal struggle of being human, tempered always with the belief that through your vision, the listener is given the chance to see Stardust glimmer against the darkness of space and life.
Abigail Hopkins’ latest album inhabits a difficult world, one where we have become embroiled by our disaffection for the plain and obvious, for the beige and unremarkable every day, and where we yearn for the differences, for the unknown to ravish us, to toy with our minds as it woos it us with the uncomfortable and the evocative; and in Stardust that sentience and consciousness is revealed, not just through a peek of the emerald curtains, but in a down to Earth grasp of the possibilities of just how moving a person’s interpretation of life can be.
The world is a large place, but miniscule in comparison to the visions of dreamers and those willing to paint vivid pictures of self-expression as by way of explanation of the part they play within it, and Abigail Hopkins harbours the emotional call and pull of it all with a deftness of touch and sincerity, and as tracks such as The Corridors of Hospitals, The La La Song, East Berlin, All The Times I, and Stardust and Moonbeams all leave their haunting mark on the album’s various themes of lost memories scattered to the heavens.
Ultimately the album is an act of communication of survival, of persisting against certain odds that are thrown at us as our bodies bend to the whispers of the fading of time, and the personal challenges and changes we notice are tempered by the sounds we surround ourselves with.
The duty that Ms. Hopkins shows to the listener is one of continuance, of the love for an instrument that binds these creative songs together, and whilst dealing with the aftermath of pain, a resolute heart can spread joy, magic, and a gift of emotion to the stars and back.
A wonderful album full of implication and connection whilst striving to be add comfort to those in a similar position of suffering, an album of graciousness and yearning.
Ian D. Hall