Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Do we lay in the sun and think of the times we desperately wanted to relieve our conscious, to absolve the sins of our creation, or do we wait for the moments in which the mood depends on melancholy, when we wish to match the weather’s appearance by admitting to the faults in our souls and the declarations of our heart? An assertion on a grassy patch of ground as the temperature rises and the sun lays directly overhead, or the Rainy Day Confessions that frame time with a sizeable revelation.
Those Rainy Day Confessions are always more alluring, the sombre note of caution adding greatly to the tale unburdened, and as the Captain Of The Lost Waves lights a fire of intrigue in the corner of the room, as he pours a suitable glass of refreshment of your choice, and acknowledges the elephant in the room, that of how recovery is often reflective in the eyes of the sufferer, and perhaps expressed wrongly by those looking in.
It is in the sense of continuing beauty, of resilience of the troubadour and the free thinker that the essence of music is the healer, it is the solemnity of the faith released that the art flows are once more demands growth, a promotion of the ethereal to which we are tied, and which freedom of thought is paramount.
For the Captain at the heart of the album, music is the miracle of pleasure wrapped in the philosophical output, and as tracks such as the title album song, Rainy Day Confessions, which sets the tone for the adventure ahead, and in A New Day, the excellent Mohammad Ali In His Heyday, Beggars In The Shadows, No Protocol, and the unexpected pleasure of being immersed into the world of the cover song, David Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes, an inclusion from a master and adopted with subtly, taste, and dramatic tension, what emerges is a relaxation, an openness of walking away from the negative, and instead once more, proudly, determinedly, healing in contemplation and absorbing frankness in all its glory.
A renewal of a spirited individual, and one to whom the listener will gladly embrace on their return.
Ian D. Hall