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Dan Sealey Dan Sealey
Album: Beware Of Darkness
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.dansealey.com

Son of Dave Sealey of Cosmotheka fame, a former member of both Ocean Colour Scene and Simon Fowler's short-lived folk spin-off Merrymouth, Sealey now steps out solo with an album that musically leans to the latter rather than the former, albeit not without a pop sensibility. Featuring John McCusker on fiddles and whistles, the album title taken from George Harrison's song of the same name and the greatly informed by Sealey' s experience with transcendental meditation after reading Harrison's memoir I Me Mine, it's all very much a product of the pandemic and its emotional challenges.

It opens with 'Looking Inward', a rhythmically upbeat folk pop number inspired by his experience 'Looking Inward' and, as the title says, unlocking your mind to the greater universal as "You're filled , filled, filled with inner strength, turn away from pain embrace the understanding/Of ,of of a billion years, a billion years of existence".

The theme's picked up on the pastoral sway of 'Yesterday Came' ("I am a man who is changing so fast/Leaving behind the mistakes of the past") coupled with a break-up ("I thought I was strong enough to say goodbye/You caught me cold, looked me straight in the eye/It's hard to let go of you, holding me tight like you do").

Both that and the lightly fingerpicked 'Better Day' feature backing vocals from Antonia Kirby, the latter song, very reminiscent of Merrymouth and with Jack Blackman on banjo and slide, a bittersweet tale of an unwanted illegitimate child ("Mother loves you but she's full of hate/She never meant to treat you bad/A boy she wished she'd never had/She looks upon you with adoring eyes/But she cannot hide the shame") that nevertheless carries an underlying optimism in the lines "Pack your anger and your paper plane away/Someday you will find a place/Maybe just a friendly face/And you'll find you're living for a better day".

Social commentary informs the bluesy loping 'Keep On Reading' about looking past the messages the media puts out and the control it seeks to engineer ("If I don't really like you I will destroy you so easily… I have all the power you see/Everyone listens to me/If it's written down you will believe/So head down and just keep on reading", specifically, it would seem, in celebrity takedowns ("I don't mean to hurt you, it's just the price that you pay for fame/If you're left with nothing well I'm very sorry it's just part of the game …I'll make you think you can trust me then I will betray you").

There's more social commentary in the shanty waltzing falsetto-sung 'Over The Sea' with is refugee narrator optimistically believing "Everything will be alright when we take flight, go over the sea/We'll be safe and we'll be warm and we won't have to run anymore" with its refrain friendly "Over the sea, we'll find a place for you and me/Over the sea, we'll find our opportunities".

Rikki Hansel on harmonica, 'People' with its doomy blues melody casts a dark, pessimistic view of humanity ("People walk, people talk, people stuff their faces full …people take, people give, people strive and people live but they never get anything done") as we continue to "make the same old mistakes, live in fear like before", but it still believes "People are capable of love, every one of them can be divine/People just need to understand they've been here all along and the journey goes on".

Shifting the tone, opening with acoustic guitar 'Into The Wild' is wry take on the healing power of nature coming from his wanting to find peace while he wrestled with his mental health ("I know that I don't fit in round here at all/I wanna go into the wild, where I could live like I don't care just like a child/And all my worries will go away, in the wild") but recognising the impracticality ("I don't know how to survive in the wild, I don't know how to catch a fish or build a fire…I think I might be lonely in the wild and I'd probably miss my friends after a while/So I don't think I'd like it in the wild, so maybe I'll just spend the day inside/It's far too cold for me to go out in the wild").

It's back to protest with the whistle-led folk-rock drive of 'All Stand Up' and its Show Of Hands-like call to resist being swallowed up "inside the belly of the corporate machine" as he declares "We will retake the power that fed and clothed us/And we'll make sure every single child has got a chance at life/A chance to love, a chance to grow, a chance to see that we said no".

There's far less of an upbeat mood to the melancholic fingerpicked resignation of 'They Don't Care', its message pretty much summed up in the title, the album closing with fiddle and ukulele on the near six minute self-doubt of 'Inside My Head' which, musically evocative of the folksier days of The Bee Gees, he says, is "a brutally honest but tongue in cheek song about not feeling you're good enough" written when he felt nobody was interested in his music ("Someone shouted out at me, somewhat controversially/Everything you're doing makes me sick/They all screamed that you're too old /You've got fat and you've gone bald/no one gives a shite about your words/Pack it in and get a job, you're nothing but a lazy slob/Who thinks he's so much better than he is"), as he pleads for just a little encouragement.

Which, ultimately, is what the album is about, not giving in to the darkness, holding firm to self-belief, not listening to those who'd bring you down, having faith in the power of common positivity and, to quote another Harrison song, looking for "The Light That Has Lighted The World'.

Mike Davies

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