You get the point quickly that Dara Anjadi is not a man given to looking on the bright side of life.
On the first line of the opening song (Guilt) he laments that "black clouds hang over my head like a halo of misery" and there is much talk of loneliness and living with a blackened heart on the other eight tracks.
With just voice and acoustic/electric guitars, there is very little embellishment to these dour songs which were recorded over two days in Milk Studios, London with Tom Aikenhead.
Dara says his chief influences are Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. Citing such names sets the bar pretty high and, almost inevitably he falls well short of his heroes.
The main problem is that the intensity of his performance sounds forced and by falling back on platitudes - "what goes around comes around"(Through The Dark), ""the writing's on the wall"(Judgement Day), "let bygones be bygones" (Alright) - you never get a real sense of the "raw honesty" we are promised.
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His press release favour the broad brush approach by unhelpfully describing the record as being "about mood, emotion and humanity".
A glimmer of hope emerges on the final tune (Alright) with a determination to banish the darkness and let in the light but you have to steer a course across some very barren and joyless terrain to get to this point.
Dara's website
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