Saturday 8 December 2018

Vesper Sky - Stewart Henderson, Yvonne Lyon and Carol Henderson




Vesper Sky
Stewart Henderson, Yvonne Lyon and Carol Henderson
Self-released-www.yvonnelyonmusic.com

For those who lament the dumbing down of some media evidenced by TV shows such as what passes for love island, we don’t have any talent and the questionable factor (no capitals deserved), this album is a glorious antidote of songs, poems, songs with spoken word and poems with music.

Singer/songwriter Yvonne Lyon, who has played with Beth Nielsen and supported Eddi Reader, opens with two strong songs including the title track Vesper Sky which has the cadences of the best that Simon and Garfunkel ever produced.

Carol Henderson who has a background in theatre, film and BBC Radio 4 drama, opens her account with a reading of How Clatter the World against an ambient beat Brian Eno would certainly approve of.

Stewart Henderson, who writes much of the material follows next with the poem Eyes Down, a lament and appeal to the wired generation to “look up and consider this has been entrusted to you so that you do not look down”.

Breakages read by Carol is about forced intrusions into our lives and our own wrecking ball yet offers hope where emotion can find an outlet in word and song.
Humour is introduced at precisely the middle of the recording with Stewart and the jaunty Perfect Fit about not fitting in, expresses gratitude for finding a fit with his partner.

Somewhere in The Library cleverly reveals the nation’s most loved books in rhyme. Yvonne Lyon returns in song with December Coast of Galloway where soft vocals effortlessly blend with piano, flugelhorn and trumpet.  Half a dozen of the twenty tracks threaten to bring tears with the tales of real life laid bare, but the delivery and the humour and the songs, evenly balances the scales.

Poetry doesn’t have to be painful.   It doesn’t have to be learned by heart for analysis only for examinations.  To quote the last song of the album it’s to Enjoy Not Endure.  It’s first use was to remember and convey human history and the brain searches and finds the meaning not only through the sounds of the words but also through the silences.

All You Need Is Love, The Beatles proclaimed. What the World Needs Now Is Love, Hal David recommended, but I’d also advance that words and music especially of the calibre of Vesper Sky, are equally as essential to the human psyche.

NE

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Municipal Tip

  Following the signs for Bowels of Humanity, we descend the corkscrew of apocalypse into the cradle of filth. We are beckoned forward by a ...