"Map to No Place" by Daydreams
Review
Permanent Daylight will need little introduction to readers: one of the fastest rising local bands (nurtured by the "Live On Stage" project run by The Tin and Coventry Music), you can check them out on March 20th when they play alongside Banoffee, Reiss Pinder and The Illusion at our next fundraiser for The Tin.
What you may be less aware of for the moment is that nestling within this trio, matryoshka style, is the duo Daydreams, comprising Faith and Joseph and which is a vehicle for their songs less suited to the full band.
Now with the release of their debut single, "Map to No Place", the cat is out of the bag.
Like a jewel, it sparkles and also like some form of cut gem, it has multiple facets which enable that phenomenon.
Despite just being two musicians, I detected all sorts of resonances. The very group name summons up quite a few sixties connections (The Monkees, The Alan Price Set and perhaps above all, Mama Cass. I even had a scent of an old Marvelettes song). However strong though the sense of soulful pop might be, this is not a track steeped in the essence of retro-stylings. It has an edge to it (like those gemstones) and perhaps the other take away from the 1960s might be that psychedelic approach: "Map to No Place" displays a series of kaleidoscopic faces to the world.
Most of these are in fact much more contemporary than the ones I've started with. For every blissful classic ballad moment, we get a reflective introspective one which is much more redolent of a world after shoegaze was invented than before.
Given the tone of the song, I feel that their decision to go with the duo format must have been calibrated with the finest of precision: laser tooled judgement. The subject matter could reasonably have been part of a Permanent Daylight song and while much of the song relies on an acoustic guitar, warm dynamics are regularly introduced via overdubs (or an additional instrument?) and the track surges sonically, becoming surprisingly big periodically to underscore the depth of the emotions Faith is singing about.
It was the right choice I'm sure: the profundity of the intense passages comes from the intimacy of the collaboration, but "Map to No Place" is no simple acoustic ballad. I don't know what other original tracks they have up their collective sleeve but this is a great calling card for establishing this part of their creativity in its own right. Keep on playing it & new aspects hit you. To be honest, I have to commit myself to publishing this review so here it is, but I'm not at all sure yet that I've satisfied myself as to my own grasp of the ultimate conclusion of the song. Sometimes I think it's quite pessimistic (it's definitely marinaded in melancholy) but then I play it again & ask myself whether it's someone mourning the loss of a relationship or someone trying to make sense of it in order to try to save it?
Perhaps I'll never resolve that conundrum, and that's not a bad thing: as I say, "Map to No Place" has many subtleties to offer us.
