Go Fiasco, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival. Pier Head, Liverpool.

Go Fiasco at the Liverpool Loves Festival 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The rule book keeps being ripped up with the earnest glee of David taking on Goliath at a game of conkers whilst using a brown painted cannon ball to press home the advantage. For Go Fiasco, every time they step on stage the boundless energy creeps up a notch, the measure of the musicianship becomes harder to ignore and the quickening pace of their wonderfully insistent songs gathers momentum and charm, for Go Fiasco, they are a living embodiment of why Liverpool has fallen very much in love with its young bands willing to pull out all the stops to make the 21^st Century a new music utopia.

Go Fiasco, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival. Pier Head, Liverpool. full post

(380 words, 1 image, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Ellenberg, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival, Pier Head, Liverpool.

Ellenberg at the Liverpool Loves Festival 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Into each day something new must arise, something to find that the pleasure of being alive is as valued as it is sought after. With the advent of a new three day festival in which the city has taken to its heart, it was only quite right that one of the very latest and indeed hottest bands should make an appearance at the Pier Head as part of Liverpool Loves.

Ellenberg, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival, Pier Head, Liverpool. full post

(412 words, 1 image, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Jimmy And The Revolvers, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival, Pier Head, Liverpool.

Jimmy and the Revolvers, Liverpool Loves Festival 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Liverpool without some certain young bands does not bear thinking about, they are the groups that have not only captured the new wave of the city’s music appreciation, the 21^st Century in which The Beatles are still emulated and lauded but to whom also there is no personal attachment to the stories going beyond their grandparents and to whom the past now is a role model and not to be afraid of. They are also the bands that consistently give such great pleasure and the sweat of a new dawn each time they play.

Jimmy And The Revolvers, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival, Pier Head, Liverpool. full post

(453 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Oranj Son, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival. Pier Head, Liverpool.

Oranj Son at the Pier Head in Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Anybody who has been pushed up on to a stage first, to have the glare of the spotlight thrust with voyeuristic intent and the simmering of gentle persuasion guide them into opening a show, a talk or even just the pressure of buying the first round and knowing full well that people will drop out behind them, that others will order fancier drinks to make them look like the bigger cheese and the more generous, might get how nerve racking it is to open up as first act on arguably one of the biggest and certainly the most new weekends in the Liverpool year.

Oranj Son, Gig Review. Liverpool Loves Festival. Pier Head, Liverpool. full post

(476 words, 1 image, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

The Ways In Which Not To Talk.

We haven’t spoken for a while,

the telephone more like an instrument

of sarcasm in your hands and the last time

I heard from you was for the voice of introspection

to try and take control of a person’s thoughts

and life that wasn’t yours to observe upon;

for the running commentary via the modern way

of stripping flesh from bone but with the crocodile

concern and false eye tear that suited your demeanour

as you laid into me, despite me having been

your only friend for a while and one who never

The Ways In Which Not To Talk. full post

(405 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Joss Stone, Water For Your Soul. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Life has never been dull where Joss Stone is concerned and that, despite many who arguably find it a national sport to knock such ability, is what matters when it comes to inspiration for any song, poem or piece of art; it is not what it seems; it is what it represents under the surface. For Joss Stone to come back after four years without a set of new songs and a fresh new album, Water For Your Soul represents hope and strength for her and her fans.

Joss Stone, Water For Your Soul. Album Review. full post

(365 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Meloni, Margarita Levieva, Madeline Waters, Abby Wait, Quinn Nagle, Austin Lyon, Miranda Bailey, Giovanni Miller, Samantha Hyde, David Fine, Natalie Stephany Aguilar, Drew Benda, Davy Clements, Robert Cure, Abby Wait.

There are some films that get released that you can’t help but admire the spirit in which they were released, the sheer striking sense of inadequacy that they impose on the thought processes and the feeling of the damaging voyeuristic intent in which they serve up the drama.

The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Ripper Street: The Beating of Her Wings. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothernberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Lydia Wilson, David Dawson, David Wilmot, Josh O’ Connor, Louise Brealey, John Heffernan, Anna Burnett, Charlie Creed-Miles, Richard Goulding, Phil McKee, Marie Critchley, Alicia Gerrard.

How far can a man be pushed before his breaking point is reached, before the Gods destroy and make mad? For Victorian Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, the Gods have been waiting a long time for the stretch of rope to uncoil to its full potential and take the man who has led H Division and the people of Whitechapel through so many crisis that the madness has almost taken on its own shadowy form; one in which now finally tears and severs.

Ripper Street: The Beating of Her Wings. Television Review. full post

(495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Marshland, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Javier Gutiérrez, Raúl Arévalo, María Varod, Perico Cervantes, Jesús Ortiz, Jesús Carroza, Salva Reina, Antonio de la Torre, Nerea Barros, Ana Tomeno, Paula Palacios, Claudia Ubreva, Lucía Arias, Chelo Castro, Jesús Castro.

Murder has always seen to be such a British fascination, the chance to play armchair detective is one that goes back before the days of the Penny Dreadfuls, before the days in which every lurid sensational aspect of the crime at hand was printed with salaticiousness and gore filled speculation and in which the art of the most despicable act grows with ever more standing in literature and art.

Marshland, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(414 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Can I Exist Without You?

Can I exist without you?

For you, blasted devil, the persistent whining nag at my ear

and the dagger that sways slightly in the breeze

as it hovers without remorse or feeling

at the knotted black foul smelling lumps in my spine,

can I truly be who I am now without your whispered

torture, the sledge hammer attacks and small drill bit

sensation causing ripples up and down what is

no longer there, if you too also disappear without trace?

An old friend I hadn’t seen

Can I Exist Without You? full post

(377 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)