This time last year, I was freezing just across the road from the English Channel (or la Manche if you’re that way inclined) just a short stroll from the De La Warr Pavillion where I’d seen Billy Brag perform the previous evening. I’d not gone to see Bill though (enjoyable, funny and stirring as he was), instead I’d driven 270 miles to catch a support act who had come up with one of my favourite albums of 2010. And here’s half of that act with one of my very favourite albums of this 2011.
Following on from the gentle activism of Dear Companion, written about the destruction of the mountaintops by his home, Daniel Martin Moore takes his musical journey inwards and upwards, making an album of spiritual songs both old and new seemingly catalysed from having a bit of a sit down at a piano. This doesn’t at first glance sound like the makings of something brilliant, but in amongst the gently-persuasive enthusiasm that fills the whole half-hour of the record, that brilliance is certainly there.
Each song here touches on several stylistic bases that sounds as if built upon childhoods soaking up the music from the radio and record player rather than church, with interpretations largely based on gospel rather than hymnal – Sister Rosetta Tharpe looming cheerfully largely during the several upbeat renditions – with even the piano-led songs such as the beautiful and stately title track feeling more as though it has come from the home rather than a large gathering. It’s also impossible to tell old from new here without a trip to the credits, Daniel’s writing of his own songs meeting his arrangements of the traditional tunes seamlessly halfway.
Central to all of these goings-on is – as with his previous records, his voice. Calm, clear and full of conviction, it’s an unflappable vocal that gives each song the reverence or joy (or both) that each song asks of him, and it’s plain to hear that he is having a great time of performing songs that he has grown up with as well as bolstering that set with his own standing happily next to them. It’s also this voice that so easily persuades the less-deistic among us that belief is not a requirement to be cheered here; it’s enough to just open one’s ears.
I’ve been scratching my head for some time about what sort of a “move” this represents, both for the artist and the listener. I don’t own many records that could lay claim to being overtly religious, mostly because I’m not a religious person in any particular direction, choosing instead to try to be generally nice and neutral in a shameless bet-hedging exercise. And looking through Sub Pop’s own esteemed back-catalogue, they’ve not touched upon the spiritual side much either. But, this isn’t a record where anything as crassly calculated as “moves” could apply. In The Cool of the Day is such an obvious step forward from DMM’s previous work on the label, and one listen is all it takes for this personal look at his own spiritual upbringing to find a place in Seattle’s finest’s roster and in my record collection as if a place had been waiting there all along. For Daniel himself, it’s a nice way for him to define his place in, and perspective on, the world by mapping out the roads and pathways that have brought him thus far. That he has decided to share this journey with us is a delight.
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