Title: The Day's War
Format Reviewed: CD
Format Released: 1st September 2014
Reviewed By: Dan Stoten
It has taken me ten full days to be able to write this review. That is quite simply because my mere words are unable to do what is a life-affirming, game-changing and stunningly meaningful record anywhere near enough justice.
It's impossible to know quite where to start with Lonely The Brave, and with The Day's War. We've extensively covered them over the past year, right from their appearance at the UK leg of Vans' Warped Tour last year, to their London gigs, and through festival season. Across every article you will note the huge praise we have showered on them, the "these guys are your new favourite band" rhetoric, and the general feeling of the fact that The Punk Archive is in awe of these five Cambridge lads.
One of the astounding things about The Day's War is the impact it had on me as a listener. I don't have any tattoos, but there are countless lyrics within the songs which I want permanently in my head, on my body, and around me. The way the record moved me is something I hadn't experienced from music until now: it's one which really got me thinking, mulling over past choices, past mistakes, past events. In a weird way The Day's War has become a representation of everything in my life, and in my past.
This may be coming across as if the album is an incredibly depressing piece. This is fundamentally not the case, as while listening to the record, there are many moments when I feel like the sun is bursting over my life. It makes me feel absolutely deliriously happy, it makes me look around and consider just how lucky I am right now. How lucky I am to have the incredible friends, amazing family, perfect relationship, and brilliant people that I have around me. It is, as I said earlier, a life-affirming record.
You can probably tell, again, that I'm really struggling to iterate my thoughts about Lonely The Brave's début album. Fundamentally for me, it raises huge amounts of emotions, it puts me in touch with areas of me I thought didn't exist. It makes me feel massively joyful, it makes me feel incredibly contemplative, and it makes me sombre.
If that isn't what brilliant music should do, then I'm not sure I know what brilliant music is...
Thus far, I've not mentioned anything about any of the individual tracks within The Day's War. Two tracks, Backroads and Deserter have been previously available on the Backroads EP, so I don't need to mention those ones here. There are three tracks in particular, however, that I do want to mention, again for fear of not doing them justice.
First of these is Kings of the Mountain. Testament to the strength of the record, on which every song is a pure-gold five-star track, this one is pretty far through. I'm not quite sure what it is about Kings of the Mountain which gets me so much, but I think it's the way the track slowly builds and builds. All the tracks on the album don't so much as grab you and pull you in: it's more that the tracks become you, and you become them: you almost become the vessel through which the lyrics are sung, the notes played. It's the same with Kings of the Mountain. It starts out as a beautiful, soaring song which begins to pulse through your veins, in your blood, early on. You then get to roughly three minutes in, and it's as if heaven has been released. All elements combine in a moment of musical ecstasy. David's heart-wrenchingly beautiful vocals ebb and flow gorgeously with their now-familiar macabre, melancholic, sombre and almost humble style; Mark and Ross' guitar chords reverberate and soar wonderfully around the landscape of the track, while the gentler drums from Gavin and bassline from Andrew keep the track's natural smoothness. It truly is a special song.
The Blue, The Green was the song on the album I was most looking forward to hearing on CD. Having heard it live, the hairs on the back of my neck didn't so much stand up as jump from my body, and the goosebumps it gave me could have been mountaineered across. On the record, it does exactly the same. Here is a track which reaches such a gloriously impassioned crescendo that it is perfect for every occasion, every emotion. For me, it has been the perfect thing to listen to after a particularly dire day at work, the passion and energy within it being the ideal foil to my pent-up work-based annoyances. Yet at the same time, it's been the right song to turn up when I've been joyfully happy. It's a wonderful piece of music, one which can be the huge black clouds pouring angry rain onto life, but can also be the sun bursting out in a blinding light from behind those clouds. I've never, ever, felt emotion within me from music as I have when listening to The Blue, The Green.
The final song I want to draw attention to here is Call of Horses, the longest track on the album at just over five and a half minutes. It's another which slowly integrates you into it until again you are a true part of the track. The overriding thing here, though, is the dramatically stark beauty of the song. David's vocals are almost impossibly beautiful. The notes he holds are so amazing that at times you almost feel you're in a bit of a dream, and you can't help but laugh (or cry) almost in wonder at them. The pace of the song is perfect as well, ideally suited to the guitar and bass. Again it's the crescendo which is just gorgeous.
There's really no more I can write about this album. There's no more I can say about the way it makes me feel, about the emotions it brings up in me, about what it does to me when I hear it. What I can say, however, is that this is quite simply one of the best pieces of music ever written and ever released. It is certainly the best record in my collection.
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