As the cascades of picked guitars give way to more solid beats, as sonics are joined by the vocal top line, you realise that Out There is the perfect example of how music keeps moving forward. Sure, there is no shortage of bluesy grooves and rock’n’roll moves, but there is something intrinsically modern about the song too.
Perhaps it is something in the way the beats land with a slight dance edge, perhaps there is something in the way that the vocals are phrased and delivered; the lyrical content is certainly something which could only be written in, and indeed about, where we find ourselves today.
And that is the point that I am making. All artists take ideas from the past, play with established sounds, find inspiration in what has gone before. But it is how you mould those touchstones and reference points into something relevant to today’s audience, how you find a new voice within older ideas, how you acknowledge what has gone before but still focus on moving forward into the future.
That is how music moves on and Dan Riley understands this perfectly.
