Now It’s Overhead – Dark Light Daybreak (Saddle Creek)
3/5
By: Chris O'Toole
Now It's Overhead produce mood music for funeral processions and wakes; using cold and sombre tones to establish a space in which Andy LeMaster explores, and attempts to confront, his worn demons. And as such, whilst Dark Light Daybreak is occasionally spiritually up-lifting, if a little loaded with trite sentiment, it is predominantly concerned with the darker side of the human psyche.
The album is set in a cold desert at night; a desert filled with unknown predators and danger. As the insets scurry to find shelter in the safety of the ground the vocals of LeMaster become moonlight, showing potential hiding places. This light, however, is dulled and diluted by the tiresome musical accompaniment of Now It's Overhead, which uses a limited pallet of synthesised sounds to the point of abuse and creates a dark all encompassing shroud.
These themes are contained in album opener 'Let the Sirens Rest'. As the track stumbles out of the blocks the warm and rounded vocal track is juxtaposed to unnatural synth jabs, creating a mournful spectacle, built with regret and broken optimism. Whilst the honeyed vocals grow to become one of the strong points of the recording, the exhausted electronic backing reaches a minor peak here, before growing steadily more mundane with the progression of the album.
'Concurrently Estranged' continues down a similar path, if with a little more propulsion, taking the form of an ode to a lost and idealised past; like 76.5% of all songs ever written. Similarly 'Walls', again composed of polished drums, paranoid synths, marching army drums and increasingly agonised vocals, follows the album blueprint of competent enough electronica for the mournful soul. These opening tracks of 'Dark Light Daybreak' are all stylistically consecutive, creating a sound like a bastardised and simplified My Morning Jacket; and whilst the band pour their hearts into their creation, they never achieve more than a thimbleful of lukewarm blood.
'Night Vision' recounts the story of an author unable to sleep using the tones of classic MOR American rock. The protagonist is obsessed with past triumphs and now unable to comprehend his present lonely malaise. Using the familiar narrative tools of driving at night, walking away into forever and strangled telephone calls to distant and missed loved ones the story unfolds into a very emotive, if a little unconvincing, melodrama.
Not until 'Type A' is the album lifted, briefly, from its melancholy. Here the listener is invited to ride along up front in a fast moving car, headed in no direction and not giving a dam; and okay the car will probably break-down on the second listen, and okay it's a 1995 Nisan Micra, but the thought is there. The track is the plea for belief we all make everyday, but not nearly long enough. In fact many of the tracks on 'Dark Light Daybreak' seek to establish a robust character and tempo, and just as they begin to succeed and your foot starts tapping, they stop - like a school girl blowjob.
Whilst the 'Dark Light Daybreak' continues to meander for another four or five tracks the album becomes tiresome, with the same elements consistently employed and similar results achieved. Whilst this is not as bad as being dragged over hot coals, its fair from pleasant and the imagination begins to wander. As the album draws to a close for example 'Meaning To Say' arrives, and it is possible to imagine the band sitting in the studio clicking along, certain in the knowledge that they have captured the mystery and magic of time, whilst all the listener can here is the same rote synthesised sounds.
In summary, 'Day Light Daybreak' sees a band lit from below in red light, thinking they have achieved more than the reality of their music. Whilst it seems crass to describe the pain and torment of an individual or group as mediocre, if you stretch it out over 50 minutes of inconsequential music, that's what will happen. Now It's Overhead, whilst not a bad band, come to a line in the sand where the clouds stop, on the edge of the desert, and seem unwilling to cross it. At times there music is stunted, even incomplete, attempting more than they achieve; always one more shot for the empathy of the crowd without ever offering more than the most basic pleas.
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