Not Dead Yet – Danny Wright (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Join an international music platform, they said. Write about music from far-flung and exotic places, they said. Ride the global sonic winds, they told me. The world is a massive place, so why deal with merely local concerns, they posited? So, imagine my surprise when I checked my inbox to find a message from Danny Wright, who, although musically based in London, got in touch because he, like me, has family in Wootton Bassett. Maybe the world isn’t so big after all.

Now, I’m not saying that he got in touch only because of the local connection; I’m sure he values a well-turned-out piece of writing as an aid to spreading the word on his latest single, Not Dead Yet. But I’m sure it helped.

But, enough of the local history, to horse!

Not Dead Yet sits somewhere between the realms of alternative rock and the more classic form. I’m not talking about the cliched rockers in logo-patched denim jackets of yore, but there is a lot familiar about the sound and style of the track. Throw in a bit of dark, brooding punk energy and no small amount of pop-aware sonic hooks, and you have a song which is wonderfully fresh in content yet vaguely familiar in style—the best of both worlds.

It is also brilliantly anthemic, particularly in the defiance found in its lyrics. It’s the voice of a man on the outside. Outside of his family circle, outside of his friends, beyond the reach of working relationships, but also that of someone who recognises his own faults and failings and is trying to make amends. It is the voice of someone asking for a second chance, a reminder that we all make mistakes but that to err is human and that to forgive is divine. So, where is that divinity when you need it?

And more than anything else, it is the sound of where rock music is today in this post-genre, non-tribalistic, cross-genre world.

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