Dark Day Afternoon –  Timothy Dark  (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Lead single She Put a Spell on Me is funky stuff for sure. Steeped in 70’s funk ethic, the excessive and effortless groove of 80’s Prince and fusing R&B, rock guitar and hip-hop rap and flow, it wanders between the downtown hustle and the uptown glitz, the urban and the urbane. As a calling card it is certainly going to draw the moth-like listeners to this beguiling flame of an e.p. but once there you realise that it is the eclecticism of this song which sums up this e.p. as a whole rather than providing its signature sound.

That Look is more of an early synth pop piece, existing at the point when the underground sounds were starting to be courted by a wider audience and more commercially minded, somewhere between the cultish, elitist underground of the late seventies and the more accessible and commercial sound of the next decade. Last Days starts in a similar place but delivers funky raps rather than pop rhymes and Performer is the song where all the previous threads come together…and more. It drives on a glam rock stomp, distant, early U2-esque guitars, Bee Gees harmonies, bruising rock-hop grooves and spoken raps, and still evoking the aforementioned P word in all his mercurial majesty.

Dark Day Afternoon is a beguiling collection of songs, playing with the decades, re-inventing, re-imagining and subverting as it goes. The references are great, the premise is brilliant and the conclusions are out of this world. It’s safe to say the boy done good. Good? Make that great!