Artist – Harry Tonks
Single – Middle Of The Night
Released – 26th January 2023
Reviewer – Ian D Hall, Liverpool Sound and Vision
Rating – 8.5/10
Play me a memory that I haven’t got to yet…
Life will always surprise you, if you allow yourself to wade in waters that you don’t know. The guidebooks may hint at the discovery and delight to be found in strange depths of human experience, the pictures and small descriptions might urge you to dip your toe, but until you do so in the Middle Of The Night and away from the glaring daylight, the experience, the joy, will remain truly out of sight, unknown.
Harry Tonks is a name to welcome, his soon to be released single, Middle Of The Night, is one of creative beauty, a softness of touch, a giant entering the fray, and a song of intelligent dramatic thought.
The energy and guile of a guitar that has the shape of perhaps Steve Hackett, a voice that is unafraid of the complexity that it is to hold, a lyric that is in the mould of Liverpool’s Ian Prowse, this is the belief to be found as the single floats on the breeze of the artist and bestows a sense of unrequited love on the sound that is produced.
There is no doubting the simplicity of the tale, of personal insight echoed by each moment that the guitar plays its notes of satisfaction tied in with remorse.
People will often shun the seemingly melancholic for the fear of what they perceive is glorifying misery, yet nothing could be further from the truth, a melancholic heartbeat is a truth untethered, it has no restrictions, the sound is that of the universe understanding its perception and take on love and the knowledge that it cannot be all things to all people, let alone sometimes just one individual. To that end Middle Of The Night is a track of importance, a memory that we have not yet been acquainted with, that we have as yet to greet as a friend…but which we surely will and with thanks.
In the Middle Of The Night we hear things that the daylight hours will ignore and shun, those hours of darkness create arguably the finest trails of introspection for any artist to play with. A cracking single, haunting, beautiful, melancholic high.
Ian D Hall
© 2022 Ian D Hall, Liverpool Sound and Vision
Middle Of The Night is released on 26th January and is available to pre-order here.