Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is always a splendid thing when you find an artist willing to break their own audience’s preconceptions and go down a route that the crowd might not understand why they have left, even briefly, what they know and understand, behind.

For some this divergence is a step outside of their fandom in which the feeling of being uncomfortable is a brazen light shone in the face, the senses hurt and the misery of rejection can be like a slap in the face, and yet if they delve deeper than the initial thought of refusing to believe, what they might find is a different kind of acceptance, one that still shines that exclusive light, but one that does it with subtly in what is considered a Dark Day Afternoon.

It is that respect of the unexpected mysterious phenomenon that you encounter when the lights come on during the middle of the day that the world seems out balance with itself, a strange feeling of disconcertment which soon gives way to appreciation for the shadows, one in which is ablaze with a changed and altered texture, a resolution to enjoy the journey in an unfamiliar world but one that soon rocks and dances to the beat provided.

For New York based and Harlem born Timothy Dark, the four strong song E.P., Dark Day Afternoon, is an affirmation of the man’s will to not be sidelined into a particular mode of thought, to ambushed into producing the same old music for the faithful. It is the spontaneity of change, of reaching out and discovering new ways of passing on the message in which the artist grows; you wouldn’t use a carrier pigeon when you have access to technology, you wouldn’t send a rose when a poem lasts longer.

In the tracks She Put A Spell On Me, That Look (The Skin I’m In), Last Days and Performer, Timothy Dark’s expansive lyrical intimacy is given a fresh face, still very much inhabiting the body in which he is known, but instead it is with a smile of difference which makes it stand out against the type, just as superb, just as lyrically masterful, and one to which he, and his fans, should be proud of having heard.

Ian D. Hall