The Whiskey Priest

The Whiskey Priest have actually managed to do something quite beautiful. Touching, maybe. The nine-minute intro totally shows you what the eleven following songs are going to be like. The whole LP has a raw emotion to it. It's a kind of strange mixture. The soulful voice, the Damien Rice-like passive style, the emotional lyrics and the purity in the music make this album something quite unique, but as Mr. Cowell would say, it’s a bit of a Marmite case, you either love it or you hate it.

From start to finish it maintains the pure and deep emotion, but it lacks a wider range of musical variety. For those of you who love relaxed, down-tempo love songs it will be a great album. Unfortunately, for the ones who can’t stand them, the album won’t be your cup of tea.

Despite it’s annoyingly strange title, If a Train Was a Doctor Was a Song is one of the best tracks on the whole album. The lyrics are like poetry, “If I was a train I would carry you along, in the dark, in the dark” and the music brings out all the folk that this Whiskey Priest has, while Winter Window is the perfect soundtrack to any Nicholas Sparks film adaptation (The Notebook, anyone?).

The only real up-tempo song of the entire album, No Man Is An Island (But Me), is only one minute and a half long. The song is a real breath of fresh air after so many slowies, but it’s far too short to even give us a small twist!
There are two problems with albums like Wave And Cloud. One, the possibility of falling asleep when listening to track after track. Second – and maybe more important – you might hate the tracks if you’re not actually in love, and that does happen! Otherwise, the album is a solid collection of love songs, or seen in another light, real poetry.