Creature Comforts : Summer Fades With A Drippy Eye
Creature Comforts
Summer Fades With A Drippy Eye
Summer Fades With A Drippy Eye is the story of a wandering nomad, armed with a Jazzmaster and bottle of Johnnie Walker, and his travels to the end of the earth and back. It is the story of a man trapped in idleness and purgatory, embracing the end of his lust for musical perfection in a vulnerable and humorously self-aware manner.
Creature Comforts is the brainchild of Daniel Seah, or Danyo, as he refers to himself. A 28 year old Batu Pahat native, Danyo’s story as a songwriter, producer and guitarist is one of extensive collaboration and travel – a journey traceable back to his involvement in Seattle-based noise rock group YOY, consisting of Japanese vocalist Moe Kogano, Canadian drummer Connor Satryo, and himself. The trio of “three pals from not-America'', as they put it, travelled extensively between Seattle and Los Angeles, spreading the gospel of their abrasive, yet jovially melodious brand of noise rock throughout the States.
Describing his new record as a collection of “stories, people and koans over a four year period,” Summer Fades feels accordingly less like a traditional LP, but instead a musical diary of Danyo’s thoughts and stories over the years, forming a document that feels deeply personal and exclusive. Recorded in studios across Malaysia, LA, Seattle, and even Singapore’s own Bukit Panjang, Summer Fades adopts a journalistic approach to its overall composition, forming a biographical recollection of Danyo’s travels, colored with ironic themes steeped in a potent sense of melancholy and existential dread. The album is not just a reflection of Danyo’s evolving musical process from his time in the US onwards, but also one of his personal development.
True to his free-wheeling roots, anything goes on its 25 tracks. Genre-wise, there are liberal references to noise rock and 80s no-wave, with its power electronics, harsh noise, distorted guitars and punk-influenced drum patterns reminiscent of bands like Daughters, Black Midi and Filth-era Swans – take “Don’t Talk to My Son,” for example. Meanwhile, Danyo’s sardonic personality shines through the dissonance and atonal noise of “Weekender” and “Kapi (I’ll swim away with you)”, while on other cuts, he displays his influences from ‘90s alternative rock, with “Sai Kang Warrior” and “This Little Bird” recalling Dinosaur Jr and Neutral Milk Hotel. And beyond the rock energy, ballads like “Kiss Her, Charlie Brown” navigate mellow acoustic sincerity, “Wrapped in Plastic” indulges in noir-esque instrumentals, while “Sky Blue” flexes its math rock leanings.
And although not adhering to a single musical genre or style, the album maintains a consistent flow and set of themes between songs, with Danyo imprinting his semi-ironic personality, nonchalant vocal delivery and distinguished songwriting approaches on each of the LP’s tracks. Reflecting his background, the album’s tracks largely lie within the sweet spot of lo-fi noise rock abrasion and clean coherency. From the generous gain used on its vocal tracks, to the heavy saturation on tracks like “Channel Surfer”, or the stripped-down arrangements of tracks like “Candlelight”, every sonic characteristic of this record seems carefully thought out. Despite heavy lo-fi saturation being applied to most instruments on the LP, it’s done tastefully enough to sit perfectly in the overall mix. The clean drums on most tracks provide a solid backbone for the various synths and overlapping guitar tracks used to create Summer Fade’s noisy soundscapes.
Lyrically, Seah touches on feelings of monotony, escapism to even politics and romance, with his crude humor juxtaposed with his unique brand of eloquent metaphorical layering: the spoken word poetry and Macbeth references on “An Adaptation”, for example, exist in conjunction with “Sai Kang Warrior”’s juvenile lyricism – the latter of which in Danyo repeatedly asks collaborator Damian Moorthy to suck his penis during the bridge (a personal favorite of mine for that exact reason).
However, to categorise Summer Fades through the lens of conventional genres and labels is not just inaccurate, but also a disservice to the album’s intentional dismissal of musical dogma. The LP’s tracklist parodies the styles they draw from, with well-written and worthy emulations of Danyo’s influences coloured with his own over-the-top takes. This self-deprecating, self-aware and approach to drawing inspiration from the music he reveres mocks the futile pursuit of musical idealism sought after by many artists today.
It’s one that results from the monotony that accompanies Danyo’s nomadic history, a sensibility that emerges on songs like “Candlelight” and “This Little Bird”. On the latter, he touches on the themes of escapist travel: “Throw me away, just throw me away … fly, fly, fly from the motherland — far, far, far from your home,” he sings, a theme Summer Fades constantly reprises with tinges of nostalgia, brought about features and stylistic inflections provided by his YOY bandmates (“This Little Bird”, “Sai Kang Warrior”). The result is the uncompromisingly genuine story of an artist continuously shifting and searching for fulfilment in greener pastures, only to find themselves wound up in the same cycle of tedium that they tried to escape. The album’s premise is poetically encapsulated on its 5th track: “And through the dirty, and through the sludge, I satiate my grudge against you. All of you, and also all mankind. So fly away via candlelight. Everybody’s waiting for a long, long time for something,” Danyo sings in resignation.
Perhaps no better metaphor comes for the record than the accompanying video for the album’s opener, “An Adaptation”. A collage of various home movies he recorded in Southeast Asia, it reflects the record’s almost-candid intimacy. As he put it himself in a press statement: “The power of albums is their ability to mark a period in time, the good, the hurt, the love – the true sadness of moments is when we forget all of these things. I’m very happy with the release, because I get to return to a very special place in time when I want”.
Summer Fades With A Drippy Eye is a piece of quintessential anti-art – a story of boredom, love, anger and despair written by a man who turned a perfectionist writing process into an enjoyable one, laughing at every aspect of himself while doing so – on his debut, Danyo’s self–described rejection of musical perfection is not so much an angsty statement, but an acceptance of the absurdity of music and the artistic process. Through his semi-parody of alternative rock hallmarks, Summer Fades is a satirical and humorous take on Danyo’s own melancholy and vulnerability. It’s one for fans of post-punk, noise rock or any kind of alternative rock, but honestly speaking, Summer Fades With A Drippy Eye is an album for those who laugh at the idea of art being anything other than what it’s meant to be.
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