David Vandervelde
Waiting For The Sunrise
Secretly Canadian
A couple of weeks ago, during a particularly stressful time I received an all important and long awaited phone call. Needing to quickly write down the information relayed to me over the phone, I scrambled around in my bag for something on which to write and all I could lay my hands on was the Waiting For The Sunrise press release. Sadly this was as close as this album would come to being essential.
Believe it or not, that intro in no way suggests this to be a bad album. Vandervelde's mini-debut in 2007 was a warm breeze blowing over much of the releases that year. It was heavily steeped in rock history, particularly that of Marc Bolan but was enjoyable none the less. The trick is making that heavy emulation last over more than one album and by the sound of his followup the plan was simply to change the point of reference. This year, soft rock and the sound of Fleetwood Mac are the source in question and much the same enjoyment is gained from this as with the debut but it really doesn't seem enough.
Opener I Will Be Fine is classic Mac as it tip toes in on a delicate beat and dainty piano tinkle. Vandervelde's hazy vocals are light and breezy and allow much room to the music as they fade to the background during extended bridge sections. Hit The Road plods endlessly on amidst a fuzzed out wall of guitars while Someone Like You rises above the sun-bleached haze to produce a nice guitar driven melody and colourful injections of retro keyboards.
Much of the feeling of the 70's is evoked on Waiting For The Sunrise including theinability to stop playing when a song has run its course. Someone Like You hits the 4 minute mark and enters into an instrumental of swirling keyboards that you'd think would see out the rest of the song, but then in come the vocals and the next half begins, but the next half is much of the same and it all just seems like an inability to say goodbye. Need For Now is as non-desrcript as you'll get and it still goes on for over 6 minutes, much of that being the same kind of plodding keyboard instrumentals. Lyin' In Bed is even longer and covers even less musical ground than it's predecessor.
This is a well produced and musically solid album, while Vandervelde has an impressive vocal range and more than achieves his goal. But when the goal seems like little more than emulation, you have to ask yourself what the point of all this is. The reason why there isn't much back story to this review is that I did actually lose that press release when the information adorning the back of it no longer seemed important to me. The same can be said for David Vandervelde unfortunately.
Links
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Myspace
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15th Sep 2008 - Tumblr
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