For his third album, Liam Merriman took himself off to Nashville, where Nanci Griffiths’ guitar henchman Thomm Jutz occupied the producer’s chair. Songwise, Merriman is inspired by Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon, adding to that craftsman’s blueprint his own contemporary polish and a subtle Irish twist. His croonsome vocals stand out on the country-flavoured ‘The Driver’ and the gritty ‘Don’t Say Die’. But he can lay back with the best of them too, with ‘What A Day’ and the classy self-harmonised ‘Keep Your Love Alive’. There’s a poetic lyricism to the title track whilst the winsome ‘Hopelands’ is a fitting addition to Merriman’s instrumental canon. The Night Is Huge reinforces Merriman as a premier league songwriter who eschews the formulaic, most notably here with the subtle uses of Brent Moyer’s trumpet and his Irish-language ‘Siobhan’. Good stuff indeed...
KEY TRACK: DON’T SAY DIE