This week’s The Socialist newspaper carried a review of my latest album We Can Make The World Stop.

Get yourselves a copy if you can.

Big thanks to reviewer Joel Lane who had the following to say:

I first heard Alun Parry, a radical singer-songwriter from Liverpool, this July at a demonstration for the Shrewsbury Pickets Justice Campaign.

His song ‘My Name is Dessie Warren’ is a moving tribute to the trade unionist who paid with his freedom and, ultimately, his life for his commitment to workers’ rights.

That song isn’t on We Can Make the World Stop, but you can find it on YouTube or on his website. Parry’s new CD, recorded with an impressive backing group, is a strong album of songs that range from the political to the personal, and from plaintive folk music to edgy pub-rock.

The standout track for me is ‘Run Patsy Run’, the true story of a building worker killed by unsafe working conditions on the Wembley stadium site. It’s the perfect antidote to vicious tabloid attacks on health and safety legislation.

Another powerful track is ‘Waiting For the Lovers’, a tender portrait of a gay romance stirring into life in the shadow of homophobic violence.

Parry’s politics define this album, as clearly as the ‘Capitalism Isn’t Working’ banner on the front of the CD. The title track is a rousing ‘call to arms’, and the final ‘All Hail To the Market’ portrays the bosses choking on their own empty rhetoric:

‘He does not hail the market the way he used to do / For he’s standing on a window-ledge as he begins to weep / And the folk who used to work for him are urging him to leap’.

The new album We Can Make The World Stop has just been reviewed in the current edition of influential national music magazine R2 (formerly known as Rock N Reel).

Reviewer Eddie Cooney gave it a whopping four stars (woohoo!) and said some rather nice things about it too.

Describing me as “an incurable champion of ordinary people” he went on to place the sound of the album as somewhere between Billy Bragg and early Go-Betweens.

“He chooses immaculately researched historical subject matter…He is also capable of clever, tension-filled drama.”

You can buy R2 magazine at News From Nowhere, Borders, and W H Smiths as well as all newsagents with a good range of mags. It’s got a free CD on too, including a track by my mate David Ferrard, who recently wowed us all at the Liverpool Working Class Music Festival.

Amongst all the album reviews it’s great to see a review of the launch gig itself, so thanks to Louise Baldock for such a full review on her blog.

Louise is a Liverpool Labour Councillor, and blogger extraordinaire.

Check out what she has to say in her always engaging blog.

Make sure you buy this week’s copy of the Big Issue In The North to check out the latest review of my new album We Can Make The World Stop.

High praise for John Lennon Said, Chasing Yourself, and Together in particular.

You can get BITN from the usual vendors, and you’ll find me on page 25.

I’ll post the full review next week once it’s off sale.

Another great review for the We Can Make The World Stop album, this time from the student wing of the city.

Ian Hall of LiverpoolStudentMedia.com writes:

“From start to finish the whole album is delightfully crafted, well written and excellently sung.”

To read the full review, check out LiverpoolStudentMedia.com