Consisting of Sarah Rose Janko (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Jasmyn Wong (drums) and Hall McCann (harmony vocals, electric guitar), Dawn Riding create a dusty and dreamy style of Americana which draws inspiration from the pasts of its members. Janko grew up immersed in blues and rock & roll at her father’s west coast bar, Wong’s formative years informed by riot grrrl records and San Francisco’s goth scene, while McCann practiced harmonies to old country tunes. And when the trio met in Oakland and formed Dawn Riding, the style incorporated a little piece of each history.
Out via The Long Road Society, latest album The Light is a testament to the fact. Described as a “33 minute long, drama-noir love story,” the record is rooted in old-time country styles but not limited to them, adding elements of dream pop and indie rock as well as a binding punk spirit. The result is perhaps best described as southern gothic—country music as it exists in the world of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers—where the wistful charms of the genre are backed up by something dark and fierce and strange.
Opener ‘Avondale’ serves as an introduction to this world. Equal parts heartfelt and irreverent, the song sees sweetness marble with the weird and the violent, characters on the edges of society now or then or maybe always. We meet the narrator at a Louisiana thrift store, where a chance encounter with a seeming stranger opens up a window into a history of train rides and jailhouses, the women who shared the cells. Revealed is a common history with bad situations, a sense of solidarity in the outsider life.
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The poignant and impassioned ‘South Missouri’ takes us to a funeral service, a track of odd details and genuine heart, not mention an undercurrent of deadpan humour. “See you laid out in a suit you’d never wear,” Janko sings, “bet you’d have thought twice if you knew they’d comb out your hair.” ‘Demon’ offers a stark balance between dreaminess and darkness, while a version of Utah Phillips’s ‘The Telling Takes Me Home’ expands this interplay to a national level. The fantasy of the American West built on bones and haunted by ghosts.
The title track is both plaintive and celebratory, a song of hard won wisdom both railing against the ubiquitous nature of loss and finding some tenacious beauty in life’s transience. ‘Love Song’ follows suit, an ode to love in all of its forms, no matter how tender, how traditional, how true.
I’ve seen so many kinds of love
Falling out the windows or shutting out the sun
Running through the streets screaming tough
Or easy as a Sunday or sugar on your tongue
Giving up your money Having someone’s baby
Lying to a judge
Or lying to your love
Threatening you’ll die
Promising you’ll kill her
Making Christmas dinner
Or bringing home some flowers
With its near-whispered vocals and lingering melancholy, closer ‘Friend of Mine’ encapsulates The Light as a whole. The intimate sound weaving threads of fondness and regret, painting characters not surprised by loss or the passing of time but no less immune from the sting. Characters tough and lonely and ultimately human, voicing thoughts perhaps to an empty room, but no less sincere for the fact.
The Light is out now on The Long Road Society and available from the Dawn Riding Bandcamp page.
Album art by Sarah Rose Janko, photo by Gem Studio