Artist – Nunnery Norheim
Album – I Saw The City
Released – 15th September 2023
Reviewer – Ian D Hall, Liverpool Sound and Vision
Rating – 10/10
A true observer of the human condition and one who sees the meaning behind every building, who feels every ounce of historical sweat that was produced as cracks and fissures were framed and restored, and who understands that the town, every village, and that of the great and expanding metropolitan, is as much of the fabric of society as the person who lives and breathes within their tempered walls….these are the people who recognise the point in documenting it all to words and memory.
I Saw The City is such a statement, a declaration of truth that of all of Liverpool’s majestic poets, those wonderful creatures of music and song, it could only have been produced by Lizzie Nunnery and Vidar Norheim. For in ten songs of outstanding natural beauty, the listener is left with a feeling of shattering absorption, of empathy restored, and the belief in a value that cannot be understated.
To declare to a artist that this is magic, that they must have been granted an audience with some sort of deity as they polished the words and the music they employ as meaning, is to do injustice to the symbolic nature of close listening, of hearing every echo that tumbles out of a ginnel and alleyway, every creak on the stairs, every round of applause from inside a city’s venue, every tear shed in silence in a graveyard at dusk; and for the pair behind this absolute gem of a album, they listen, like so many, they feel as they look into the heart where all roads lead and can honestly proclaim it is with huma eyes that they saw everything the city has to offer.
Across tracks such as This Old Town, You Are Here, Moving To The Sticks, Cut Up The Sky, the passion behind the opening track of The Wilds, and the tremendous finale of the album’s title track, Lizzie Nunnery and Vidar Norheim lead by example, they see the vision of tear deep within the heart, they see the scars, they hear the joy of momentary hope, and it all inflames and influences the soul.
I Saw The City is an album of absolute music generosity, of majesty, of beauty, it is a dream to behold Nunnery Norheim’s vision.
Ian D Hall
Review © 2023 Ian D Hall, Liverpool Sound and Vision
I Saw The City is available to pre-order from Bandcamp.
Join Nunnery Norheim at the album launch show on Saturday 16th September at the Music Room, with support from Sara Wolff (Facebook event here). Premium tickets are sold out, but you can buy regular tickets from the Liverpool Philharmonic Box Office.
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