Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We no longer think of the album before us as the finished article, that everything we hear was all that was recorded in the studio at the time the artist spent pouring blood and sweat in the name of releasing their soul; for there are always extras, cuts to the recording, extended takes which often give rise to questions from the listener, and then the tracks that could not be found a home at the time but which later are revealed in a golden hue, in celebration of the artist’s will.

Over the course of six months one of the most searingly honest and soul searching of songwriters and musicians that call Liverpool their port of call, their home on stage and who walk the Mersey way with fierce pride, John Jenkins, is releasing several tracks that didn’t make the fabulous Tuebrook album, but which stand tall in the glare of the previously unreleased, and whilst March showed the listener an open heart of love in the splendid The Reason, April’s unveiling witnesses something perhaps slightly more different, still just as passionate and consistently cool, but one that digs into the desire to hide away when the world is out to get you, when all you want to do is Bury Myself In The Sand.

Co-produced by the indomitable John Lawton, who also doubles up in the studio on guitar/bass and drum programming, and Chris Howard and Tony Peers adding to the sense of melancholic beauty on piano and horns respectively, Bury Myself In The Sand is a song of achievement, a poet in action who yields to no one and the cries of despair from the insanely permanently happy who have too much to hide.

There are times when things snowball, when the world feels more like a conspiracy against you, and it is understandable to feel that way, our minds latch onto the reality that time is sometime cruel and we require a breathing space, an action of self-care in which too cling to in earnest suffering. Bury Myself In The Sand is that circle we should embrace, it is truthful, it is the desire for loneliness at times when it all becomes too much, but it is also the reset we require to come out fighting and smile in the face of adversity, and armed with the compassion that we will not allow anyone else to find a large beach, and bury their own heads in the sand.

A wonderful single, a different pace, the same dedication of spirit, John Jenkins is a musician of depth and pride.

Ian D. Hall