In break from normal when it comes to reviewing, I'm going to start off this effort with the conclusion. Buy the damn thing and be done with it. There's no way that I or any critic/reviewer who claims to have any sensitivity to creative energy can in honestly "tell you what it's all about" because we didn't pen the goddamn thing, for which I can't decide whether to be jealous or grateful. If that made sense then you're halfway to understanding the problem faced by me, anyway.
"Yonder!" as in "Look over yonder and what did I see, waiting for to carry me home?" "Calliope?" although not one of the heavenly hosts one's liable to see over the river Jordan on most days, less you're a sun kissed poet or been blessed by Allah with the gift of verse, is in her way angelic enough. That's in spite of her habit of being as fickle as whatever people are as fickle as, and as coy with her charms as a young thing raised by nuns set lose on the world with a yen to know a lot more than the sisters were willing and able to show her.
Calliope is of course inspiration, or at least one of the infamous muses who will periodically deign to whisper in a man or woman's ear in such a way that they will be infused with the desire to write, sing, dance, versify, and in all other ways possible, expose their soul for all the world to gaze upon.
Taken together, with the exclamation point and the question mark bracketing the muse as they are in Yonder! Calliope? -- Aaron McMullan's debut CD on the brand new Ex Libris label out of London, England -- tells you quite a bit about this young man from Belfast and the music that this CD tries to contain. One, he believes in the power of inspiration, and two he is still hasn't quite been able to bring her, Calliope, into focus.
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