The story-line is clear cut, his sense of character runs deep, and Real Life offers everything the title promises with regard to his world and his viewpoint within it.
Music
The first thing to strike about That Kid Roy’s music is the sheer clarity & speed of his leading vocal delivery. In an arena loaded with mumble-rap & uninteresting repetition, his voice stands tall among its peers.
Tough On Fridays have an unexpectedly beautiful sound that creates a vast arena of contrast around you between the thick, distorted energy of the instrumentation & the gentler, expressive feel of the leading voice.
A live show would be something beautiful, likely bringing people together, inspiring a sense of togetherness and a shared desire to simply embrace the good times and to revel in feelings of love.
Rivertide’s music has a certain purity & softness that comes through with a welcomed organic honesty right now in among the volume & chaos of the world’s multi-layered, pop soundscape.
You can really lose yourself in this album as a playlist, the music is thick & loud & lets you escape reality, but at the same time – the songs deal with issues of the heart; things that matter, things that affect people.
Freedom Cry is an important song & one that turns back to the roots of the genre to let hearts & minds speak honestly & artistically. It’s something of a secret masterpiece in what it sets out to portray & achieve.
A track that fuses a passionate & multi-layered backdrop with a confident, rhythmic leading vocal performance that takes inspiration from the likes of Empire State of Mind.
Where there are many big beats & thick, retro bass-lines & riffs, there’s also so much that is not purely for the party – songwriting is an art form & Totally Awesome Summer have treated it as such.
Not since the days of Incubus & System Of a Down has a band taken to such unpredictable, deeper than deep, observational & reflective songwriting, particularly not alongside of such entrancing & skillful musicianship.
Dion’s voice drives the song’s melody & underlying sentiments in a perfectly genuine & fitting way. It’s a song from the heart, with good intentions, and this shows at every step.
The song introduces a certain lightness to the room, a laid-back ambiance and a set of ideas that allow audiences to switch of from the stresses of daily life.