Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We fall, we rise, it is a circle that never ends, it is a loop n which there is no escape, for in such motions we must embrace all possibilities that Time can throw at us, and which our minds and souls must strive to endure and relish within. It is in the small hours, when the urge to reach out and find solace with kindness and the words, Stay Awake With Me to a loved one or hopeful Muse ever praying on the end of silent lips, that we rise the highest, for in that moment we seek redemption in another’s eyes, we seek the song to which even Icarus could have grasped before falling to Earth, his home-made wings blistered and burned by the kiss of the Sun.
You can sit and dwell to the point of personal agony all the falls that you have suffered, real or imagined, self-inflicted or driven by the monsters we once called friends, but it is in the act of soaring, of reaching out from the lowest point in which the Muse smiles and helps the artist achieve the act of reaching out; for Shrewsbury’s Dan Owen reaching out is arguably the point, almost a sense of the confessional, if not for the falls in life, but for the beauty and elation that comes with the highs.
The high means nothing unless you have imagined and tasted the effects from down below, and in his debut album, Stay Awake With Me, the high is in a realm of absolute achievement, of having the foresight to produce an album that owes much to the humble experience and the welcoming humility that is forthcoming in every song on the album.
From songs such as Icarus, Fall Like A Feather, Parachute, the album’s title track Stay Awake With Me and Splinter, Dan Owen’s hard-hitting but delicately placed vocal tones take the listener on a voyage of their own self-discovery, of understanding possibly the reason of empathy, of going beyond the seemingly sympathetic and the loop of rise and fall that comes with having the ability to respond to the stimuli and the outcome of one’s own actions.
Stay Awake With Me, the artist might well implore of the Muse, rarely though does the creative minx give such a stunning bedtime reply as this.
Dan Owen will be performing at Liverpool’s Leaf on October 4th 2018 as part of national headline tour.
Ian D. Hall