Back in July we featured a track from Montreal’s Devon Welsh, formerly the lead of duo Majical Cloudz. His second solo release, Welsh’s new album Dream Songs sounds immediately more classical and organic than the electronic pop of Majical Cloudz, although the basic blueprint remains the same. It’s Welsh’s voice and presence that looms large on these songs, offering up a generous window inside himself and inviting us all to take a peek inside. “The music on the album represents what’s happened in my life in the last few years,” Welsh describes, “and I hope it shows my love for everyone who took part in that time with me.”
The album begins with ‘By the Daylight’, all sombre, stirring strings and plucked guitar which acts as a metronomic influence, standing in for traditional percussion. Welsh delivers his vocals with a strange sense of restrained passion, every word carefully and meaningfully uttered and still glowing with a sense of barely restrained emotion.
The heartfelt ‘Summer’s End’ recalls the almost operatic folk rock of Shearwater, the vocals ranging from wail to whisper, while ‘Dreams Have Pushed You Around’ is an elegant piano track, at once lifted by graceful strings and anchored by Welsh’s very human sentiments. The track is an example of what makes his writing so distinctive, a strangeness that breeds connection rather than alienation, dysfunctionality as the common mark of human experience, and one which allows a direct airing of thoughts and feelings.
“I snuck in to your room last night
I stayed in the dark
it was innocentdreams have pushed you around, you said
but I am innocent
you have let them inyou think time left this behind
but it’s in your mind
you need love in your life”
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Indeed, it is this sincere communication that makes the album what it is. A tension between restraint and complete openness remains, the album never once descending into all-out messy catharsis. Even the tracks that soar are kept in check by a sense of close consideration, and as a result the album has a sense of maturity, as if his time with Majical Cloudz has allowed Welsh to grow as an artist. However, that is not to say Welsh holds anything back in his writing. Rather, he splashes the entire contents of his brain or soul or whatever across these ten tracks. “I want to love more and better,” he says, “I want to surrender more, I want to live with less fear, I want to participate in healing and connecting. I think I subconsciously write about the things I’m hoping for, and the songs on this album are about those desires.”
As we described in our preview, ‘Vampires’ is “stripped back to a lonely minimum, a kind of late-night absence across which Welsh’s distinctive vocals can move, the introduction of small notes acting like sparks and streetlamps in the gloom, building slowly into an incandescent glow as Welsh rises from from baritone into near devotional warmth.” This atmosphere continues into ‘I’ll Be Your Ladder’, with it’s repetitive, almost antiphonal quality. Soft synths and slo-mo sax give provide an organ-like drone, the powerful vocals repeating each line several times, giving things the feel of a responsorial hymn.
“Time cools me
With laughterAs I see the ways
I am changingAnd I know I want to
Be your ladder”
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Closing track ‘Take it Easy’ is a fitting end, simultaneously reserved and decidedly not, earnest sentiments delivered smooth and syrupy over swelling strings. Like much of the album, it feels personal but oddly formal, as if it’s drifted in from some long-dead decade. Sentiments free from time and trend, dredged up from the bottom of some heart or soul and held aloft, with the utmost seriousness.
Dream Songs is out now via You Are Accepted and you can get it from the Devon Welsh Bandcamp page.