Dipsea Flower – Kiss The Sky
Reality’s got a wicked sense of humour and a way of stopping things before their time. The great young athlete gets injured before they can earn a trophy. The preacher who’s going to change the world gets shot by accident. The art manifestos never get printed on time, and the artists with the most creative ideas are forced to stop before they’ve said all that they had to say.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why so many music fans are nostalgic about late 1960s Californian folk music. Maybe it’s why Dipsea Flower take such inspiration, and so lovingly, from it. It’s because, for many, it feels that this music scene ended before it had the chance to fully bloom. It ended before those artists fulfilled their promise and led us toward the truth.
Dipsea Flower’s “Kiss The Sky” unapologetically tries to recreate the magic of Laurel Canyon songwriters and looks to push all of your worries away for a while. This approach seemed likely to work the first time around. Who knows what actually happened back then? Why can’t beautiful melodies, acoustic guitar chords and positive vibes work together to change the world? “Kiss The Sky,” if only for a moment, really feels like it could succeed.
Pat Hatt – Drunk On Leaving
You’ll learn about yourself from the way that you view the life of a travelling musician, trust me. Do you see them as heroes who manage to avoid responsibility, always get to experience new things and, generally, have a lot of fun? Or, do you view them as avoiding responsibility, living rough and never managing to fulfil their potential because they tend to have too many distractions in their life?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to avoid danger. Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing wicked about refusing to be brave. But the ones who share the first view about working musicians may, at least, want a bit of danger, bravery and excitement in their lives. They are the ones for whom songs about the open highway, books about grand adventures, and movies about heroes getting their just rewards are made.
Pat Hatt takes everything he’s learned from years of playing music in bands in this earnest, hopeful heartland rock of “Drunk on Leaving.” It’s a song about choosing the open highway and the risks of the unknown over a stale, boring life. To some, the song and the confession may simply be a way of watching a life that they’ll never want to have from afar. For others, this might be the invitation that they desperately need.
