Deaf Havana

All These Countless Nights

Written by: TL on 13/02/2017 13:09:46

It's been a while since we last heard of England's Deaf Havana, specifically four years since "Old Souls" provided the band's folksier follow-up to their widely recognised breakthrough album "Fools And Worthless Liars" from 2011. They return this year, however, with twelve tracks of 45 minutes on "All These Countless Nights", on which fans will find themselves mostly in familiar territory, as the group has not exactly reinvented the wheel, sounding perhaps a bit more like the older of the two mentioned albums than the younger.

Since parting ways with their screamer following their debut album, Deaf Havana has been sort of a songwriter's rock band, where it was hard to point to a specific trait or nuance to their sound that was just theirs, which they compensated for with the recognisable singing of main man James Veck-Gilodi. And the seemingly chronically world-weary singer is at it once more on here, with lyrically focused tracks routinely circling around the he most currently blames for his tiredness.

Relatively often, the target is his drinking, a subject he does not have the most original take on perhaps, yet his tendency to pitying himself a bit is hardly unfamiliar to anyone who's had Sundays where the moral hangover presses harder than the physical one, so you'll most likely understand where he's coming from even when he's a tad dramatic about it. And in fact some of the more contemplative and mellow moments on the album are the ones that sink in the most, here thinking primarily of "Happiness", where the remorseful "It eats away at everything, but mostly love" is particularly prone to linger in the memory, but also the latecomer "St. Paul", which - aside from mildly amusing reminiscence of Jamie Walters - stirs attention with lines about the friction of finding someone who's right while you're still entangled with someone who's not.

Despite some ultimately relatable moments, however, "All These Countless Nights" is also an album where it is becoming increasingly odd, that Deaf Havana aren't coming up with any other remarkable components to their style. There are perhaps three or four instrumental bits on the album that you'll have half a chance of remembering (thinking of the guitar signatures in "Trigger", "England" and "Sing"), otherwise everything else seems to be neatly ordered chords and token guitar solos, suitable for airplay on daytime radio and a description as soft-rock, which, to be honest, feels a bit uninspired once you give it a second thought. The album as a whole is melodious, singalong-able and momentarily infectious, but it does sort of leave you wondering if Deaf Havana ever asked themselves what they wanted to try out before starting to make a new album or if they're content with reusing the simple yet relatively efficient methods they've got down so far.

Download: Happiness, St. Paul's, Trigger, Sing
For The Fans Of: Fatherson, Mallory Knox, We Are The Ocean
Listen: facebook.com/deafhavana

Release date 27.01.2017
SO Recordings / Silva Screen Records

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