Albums of 2016, number 10: “Solace,” A Day Without Love
It’s December, which means it’s time to start paging through the old music collection and reflect on the new sounds and discoveries of another year. Given the subjective nature of this page, I thought it’d be best to focus on albums that might have gotten overlooked in the far-flung galaxy of media that is the internet; albums that I’ve stumbled upon by meeting people at DIY shows or other happenstance. The first record I want to discuss this year is A Day Without Love’s “Solace” which did my favorite thing that any record could do: It surprised me.I’d met singer/songwriter Brian Walker at a basement in Philadelphia earlier this summer and we’d kept in touch. So, I was sitting in an airport terminal waiting on for a flight to Austin, TX when he sent me a link to his newest album and asked me to give a listen. Admittedly, a sleepy airport terminal is not the ideal place for a first, critical listen of an album and my takeaways were its clear emo influence and a sense of isolation that pervades the entire work. What wound up engaging me on the album was the root of this isolation and how Walker takes a broad emotion at the root of emo music and elevates it through his unique perspective. You see: Brian Walker is a black man playing indie/DIY music. It’s not my place to get into the totality of his experience (read one of his blogs on that here), but I can tell you it took him seven years of playing shows before he found himself on show with another black artist in his home city of Philadelphia.
Throughout Solace, Walker chronicles the various instances of isolation he perceives in his life in the DIY scene (“Joseph”), as a black man in America (“They Don’t Want Us to Live”), and from his own community (for not being “dark enough” in “Constantly Ignored”).
Echoing these themes are moments of discordance in the music; there’s bit of Pixies meshing with the Sunny Day Real Estate in the bass line of “Capacity” or the vocal harmonies of “They Don’t Want Us to Live.”
There’s a conversation occurring on Solace and it’s one that Brian Walker is uniquely poised to begin, which alone makes this an album worth investigating.
What’s more, today (December 5, 2016) is the last day to get this record on bandcamp by naming your own price. Check out the album here.
Today's your last day to name your own price on Solace!
