Reviews
Artist: O'Hooley & Tidow
Album: Silent June
Label:No Masters
Tracks: 11
Website:http://www.ohooleyandtidow.com
This is one of the hardest reviews I've had to write in quite sometime. Every time I think I've got a grip on "Silent June", it slides from my grasp, takes another couple of twists and turns and I find myself chasing off in a different direction.
There is an intensity about the album that paints such vivid images. The strength of the arrangements and the instrumentation are such that you feel it could survive as an instrumental album or at the very least the soundtrack to a classic silent movie, it really is that dramatic. But, to accept it as such would be to do a great injustice to the lyrics.
Well I say lyrics, poetry would be a more apt description, they conjure images in your mind, having the decency to step back far enough to let your imagination to fill in the gaps and pauses they are left hanging for you.
The problem with intensity is that after a while it comes oppressive, it's a thin line, topple over it and it can become all too dark to see properly. Just as you're being lead to the precipice, the whole mood is lightened and you find yourself being distracted.
In the first third of the album, the catalyst for change is a piece of accapella frippery about a broken banjo, "Banjololo". It's an absolute delight and just involves adding extra syllables into the words of the song. I've tried to sing along to it and it's a real bitch, but it does provide a reset button for the mind.
There are too many albums that sit in the darkness and forget that the human condition in a complex one it's says much to the strength of the album that it understands what makes people tick.
Belinda O'Hooley has a reputation for her acerbic wit. If you've been lucky enough to attend an O'Hooley & Tidow gig, you'll know how Belinda uses the between song banter to set up the next song and change the mood. Somehow the album retains that without the aid of the monologue.
Similarly if you've been to an O'Hooley & Tidow gig, you'll know just how essential Heidi Tidow is to the whole. Heidi is the difference between a picture and a painting. A picture captures a scene, a moment, a painting is interpretation the viewer places on the event. It may not be as true as the original, but it has the spark from within that has been placed over the top.
The album also features guest appearances from, amongst others, Jackie Oates and Anna Egglesment(Uiscedwr) both great performers in their own right, content to add body to the spirit of the songs.
There's eleven songs on the album, I've only named one in the review, there's a good reason for that and it goes back to my very first sentence. If I were to try and give you more description than that of the simplistic elegance that the album sits on I wouldn't be giving it justice.
This has been a different album every time I've heard the craftsmanship that that takes is exceptional. "Silent June" is an exceptional album.