'Beware of Darkness' by Dan Sealey

Dan Sealey is such an active figure in the local music scene, running what seem like innumerable top notch open mic sessions here, there and everywhere & mentoring talented emerging artists (which in my book is a crucial role to be saluted) that maybe his own musical career can get overlooked.

The latter which has included membership of such classy original bands as Ocean Colour Scene, Merrymouth and Merrymaker featured the sort of subtle, exquisite compositions & performances which attracted aficionados: as recorded in our review of a gig by the last named as regrettably far from recently as 2019: there simply have not been any subsequent opportunities alas.

So Dan has been very busy helping others & prioritising that it would seem over his own creative career, yet quietly he's been crafting his solo debut album & clearly favouring the longer route taking in perfection to short cuts of expediency. I've been aware of it for a long time & checked in with Dan periodically (hopefully without hassling him too much): it nearly appeared towards the end of 2024 but now I gather that it has a release scheduled for March.

Entitled ‘Beware of Darkness' (a George Harrison nod?) it contains ten tracks which to be honest stretch my capabilities as a reviewer: words at best tend to be inadequate to convey a different artform & in this case they are just a well intentioned approximation: I urge you to play it at the first opportunity.

That the ten start with "Looking Inward", and end with "Inside My Head" sends a pretty strong message of Dan seeking to explore the subject of introspection and despite their name, Merrymaker were masters of the reflective, the sombre & elegiac.

Looking at the album title he's gone for, it seems he wants to balance any suggestion of   negative rumination with a warning to take care over an excess of melancholy and the other eight titles ("Yesterday Came", "Better Day", "Keep On Reading", "Over The Sea", "People", "Into The Wild", "All Stand Up" and "They Don't Care") tell different stories to their bookends.

Naturally this is an album of maturity in every sense & one for those who appreciate a succession of layers of songs to explore in return visits. With a top stratum of accessibility in each case, no-one is excluded from enjoying any of these tracks, but the seasoned listener will appreciate just how much Dan has created for them.

This is to some extent a trip through aspects of the human condition (don't worry: it's not a concept album as far as I can see, but certainly a themed one) and he demonstrates compassion at each turn, without ever having recourse to platitudes. This tendency must come both from a maturity of perspective & a finely honed songwriting craft: the dismal parade of lyrical commonplaces & bromides is frequently the factor which determines whether I feel I can find positives enough in music to write about it or not.

The album is an acoustic one (I imagine few people will be surprised by that) and it's another tribute to his taste & skills that within the palette he's chosen to paint with, he summons up so many different combinations & variations: always offering stimulating arrangements but never adding more than required to frame each song. It's great to report that helping him out are a number of artists we've featured over the years: Antonia Kirby on backing vocals, Jack Blackman on slide guitar & banjo, Rikki Hansel on harmonica plus John McCusker on flute & whistles. Every part perfect to enhance the songs & of course zero grandstanding.

The musical mood, as with the best writers who can set tunes at angles to the lyrics for extra emphasis & effect, is generally very jaunty. Your feet will be tapping along throughout and maybe you'll want to get up and dance: all the while thinking "he's right there you know" in relation to the words: in other words this is music for people capable of dual processing.

It's tricky for me to get the right balance between the parts & the whole: each song is a finely polished gem but also there is a real sense that the entire album has a unity of purpose. Realistically of course every track has its unique value & I strongly doubt that Dan will play the whole collection in the order set out here (though that approach is more popular these days I admit). It's one of those where all of the tracks might be considered for a single and I suppose that once you've experienced the whole, you can dip back in & use individual tracks as your emotions require. If intensity is something you can only process in small amounts, you may prefer to sample it thus.

Though ‘Beware of Darkness' has been long in the making, the great thing is that the songs are all timeless: they can only grow with you gracefully rather than fade as the more ephemeral types will. In fact that's another aspect worth mentioning: quite apart from having no ties to the here & now, Dan repeatedly references the broad passage of time & specifically cites issues experienced by humanity forever. For example, "Better Day" refers to the challenges of life as well as the introspection mentioned earlier yet looks as much forwards as backwards, acknowledging the difficult but offering hope. It's an antidote to despair and so corrects any possible misapprehension of his message without denying the more sombre. That it features more guests than other tracks may be no coincidence.

Sitting right on the pivot of the sequence is the heaviest song, "People" and epitomises the tensions and dichotomies in all of them: an almost bewildering collage of anguished blues (this is where Rikki's harmonica comes into play), doom laden passages & much lighter ones of hope, Dan explores the depths & heights of human behaviour over four and a half minutes: I think he comes up on the side of optimism but it's a close call.

It's not fair on Dan to dissect all the tracks before you've had time to draw your own conclusions, nor to you the reader by  too lengthy a piece, but I'd say that most tracks cover this tussle for emotional balance & while not shirking realities, he does favour the hopeful. For every "People", there is an "All Stand Up" where the arrangement soars rather than howls. It can ask a lot of questions of you if you pay attention, but you are rewarded by potential answers.

In emphasising the sophistication of composition, arrangement and performance (not to mention sequencing which seems to have received equal attention), I really do not wish to give the impression of an elitist or inaccessible record: quite the reverse. ‘Beware of Darkness' is a true folk record in the sense it's about real people & for real people. The aim here is surely for the listener to enjoy themselves as much as Dan himself & to identify with his wisdom as much or as little as the mood on any given occasion suggests to them