Daydreamers –  Marla and David Celia (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Those with their ear close to the grass roots end of the music spectrum, the place where jobbing troubadours and sonic dreamers wander with little concern for fame and fortune, have long been aware of the potency and potential of both David Celia and Marla for many years. One an expert in pop melodies and wry observation, the other a painter of rootys soundscapes and drifting folk eloquence, separate they are both great to say the least, together they become something much more the sum of those, already admirable parts.

Daydreamers is a document. A document of a long distant relationship, of the touring life, of their hopes for their own future as well as those for the world around them. It is also a document of the sound of the 60’s folk revival but one seen less through rose tinted retrospectcles and rather through the timeless and cyclical nature that music is beholden too.

The title track is built around a wonderful, innocent wide eyed hippy ethic which is sadly to often missing from our current dark and cynical age, Follow Me is a gentle piece of drifting acoustica, one that Crosby Stills and Nash would have, okay not quite killed for but may have given you a hard and unnerving stare, and Warming Words is a gorgeous slice of lilting country-pop. It is also an open and unabashed love letter to each other, I Am Her Man and Lover of Mine seeing the two of them trading their feelings for each other but doing so in a way that swerves the obvious or the mawkish and lands perfectly in the realms of timeless classic.

Musically it may look to the past for its references but in all other respect it is a forward thinking album, one that is graceful and celebratory, gentle, wonderfully open and honest and grafted with genuine affection both for each other and the music that they fashion to that end. How joyously refreshing.