Mike Ryan - Mike Ryan

by Steve Kinrade

published: 18 / 1 / 2022

Label: Meadows Records
Format: CD

Exquisite and astonishing eponymous second album from Wirral-based singer-songwriter Mike Ryan

Review

It has always been my position that the concept of the album is very important, and not particularly in the sense of the concept album, which evokes the Herculian musical navigations of such mighty beasts of the genre as Yes’s 'Tales From Topographic Oceans', or Genesis’s 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway'. No, the collection of compositions that make up the album as an artistic statement is the important thing, which then goes onto embody the creative world it inhabits. The sum begets a collective whole. Also important is at what time an album is released - but more of that later. Mike Ryan’s eponymous second album sees him build on his first album and the work in collaboration with The Coral’s Bill Ryder Jones, resulting in a satisfying and coherent musicality. The album was released at the back end of this October, and to these ears it sonically matches the changing of the seasons. The brightness and freshness of summer is slowly being transmuted into a duller palette of autumn. Ryan’s dreamy-smooth voice eases us through this transition, and the song titles 'I’ll Watch The Sun';, 'Under The Weather' and 'Lights Go Out”'support this view. In fact we are transferred into a dream state, a kind of half world, with Ryan being a disembodied narrator.The tracks 'I Have You' and 'Headlights' have a nursery-rhyme feel to them, the latter having an exquisite piano refrain. The opening to' Carry My Heart' is distant and half heard, and Ryan employs the nursery rhyme technique again. Its thematically very satisfying. Compositionally very strong, the production is both nuanced and fits the brief, resulting in a work of real substance and beauty. Ryan’s vocals act as aural spun-gold, holding everything together, keeping the songs gossamer wrapping intact. This is an album of the half-shadows, the whispers of the half recollected, thought and regret, and ultimately one of transition. From summer to autumn, the wheel continues to turn. Ryan has caught the zeitgeist of the moment we all feel. Astonishing

Track Listing:-

1 I'll Watch the Sun
2 Under the Weather
3 Wave After Wave
4 If I Have You
5 Carry My Heart
6 Headlights
7 Lights Go Out
8 Put Those Dreams To Bed
9 One Last Dream
10 Lost Broadcast (Euphoria)