There’s over five thousand miles between Liverpool and Los Angeles. One vast expanse of ocean and no direct flights. Land wise, there’s Ireland, Newfoundland and then a continent’s worth of cities, towns, lakes, rivers and rocks. A chaos of wi-fi connections and errant mobile signals; weather systems and colloquial differences. On one side, Big Sur. The Pacific Coast Highway. On the other, Crosby Beach. The M62. The similarities aren’t immediately obvious. Yet… Listen as the piano starts. The notes roll in gently like waves lapping at soft sand. A voice sighs from somewhere along the Water’s Edge… “From the sky, I can see the birds fly…” It’s transportational. It’s a trip. It’s the sound of the Mersey opening out into the Pacific Ocean. The debut album from We Are Catchers flips effortlessly through time and space as it tiptoes a musical ley line stretching from the North West of England to the West Coast of America. It weaves the harmonic threads left by the likes of the Wilson Brothers, Arthur Lee and Buffalo Springfield, threads that were picked up and pulled along by people like the Head Brothers, the Coral and their former guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones. It draws patterns and shapes in the dust Lee Mavers ordered for the mixing desk back in Eden Studios in the late ’80s while conjuring beautifully basic rhythm tracks that sound like someone kicking against the floor to keep a beat going. Timeless and out of time, We Are Catchers is a long player that easily could have come about in 2014 or 1966. Wistful and hopelessly romantic, it’s the soundtrack to the city of Liverpool daydreaming under a different sky, a record that makes sense of the undeniable melodic and rhythmic connections that link two of rock’n’roll’s richest wellsprings. We Are Catchers is Peter Jackson (vocals and piano). The album was recorded with a little help from Bill Ryder-Jones, Austin Murphy, Richard Formby & Henry Broadhead. It was recorded in Eve Studios and in Peter’s house and produced by Peter, Bill Ryder-Jones and Darren Jones.
