Album Review: David J Roch – Skin & Bones
Skin & Bones
Released 29th August 2011
This week sees the release of the début album by David J Roch, entitled Skin & Bones. We recently introduced you to David and showed you a video for his single The Lost Child, which is the opening track to this album. What a way to open an album too, just wow. It mixes perfect soprano notes with more of a folk style vocal so effortlessly. The track is simply mesmerising and I dare you to not want to keep listening to see what else the album holds after you listen to this. Especially when the following track Hour Of Need wakes you up from your daydream bliss, in a nice way. The percussion is heart shattering from the start and then the vocals come through, lyrically beautiful and joined by female vocals that are simply heavenly. I’m totally caught up in every word in every sound of this album, and this is only track two. I know that this continues throughout the album too, I’m not just writing a track by track as I listen.
Dew is quite a dark track musically and lyrically. The vocals aren’t at the forefront of the mix either which makes it feel even darker. It is a track that demonstrates that David J Roch is able to write gritty and intense tracks as well as soaringly beautiful ones. There really is nothing that I dislike about this song. Every introduction of a new sound is perfectly timed and perfectly placed within the track. The vocal is thicker and heavier too to fit with the over all feel of the song. I wish that The Devil Don’t Mind, from earlier in the album was also produced in a similar manner because it could have been another amazing track but somehow it doesn’t quite work as well. Perhaps it’s the very stark beginning that then moves into a pretty ditty and then back out to the starkness just as quickly. I’m not that fond of the lyrics either it must be said. But at least it shows a total contrast in ability across the album. It does finally get going around the 3 minuite mark and it finally becomes incredibly dark with the use of organs, oh so gothic, and the clapping. I have to admit that the way this track moves on and progresses is interesting and I do like it on that level. I just think I might not have placed it quite where it is on the album, but that’s just me being picky.
The album’s title track Skin & Bones, is as expected, one of the stand out tracks. It’s simply beautiful, there isn’t any other word to use to describe it. It’s also so intimate that I feel a little like I’m intruding on something really personal here, which is part of the attraction to the track too. Not that I feel I shouldn’t be listening but that this is a track that is so honest, actually it seems brutally so. The female harmonies are here too in this track and the two vocals work so perfectly together that you wonder how the pair don’t go around on a daily basis singing everything they have to say. The song moves forward, gains in pace, introduces brass and the texture builds and builds, layers of vocals, layers of instruments. Just perfect. I wish more people were brave enough to really put their heart down on the line in a song like this.
David J Roch is exceptionally good at building songs, not just writing them, but building them up, ripping them down and filling in the gaps. Every sound feels as though it has been put just where it is as a bigger part of the plan. You can imagine how each song started out as a basic structure and then had walls and windows put in, but it isn’t just bricks and mortar, words and notes that make something complete and warm and homely, its down to the tiny details and that is exactly what you can find here. Each track could be seen as a room, each decorated lovingly, well thought out and well planned. Emotions good and bad, memories and ideas, they all adorn each wall. This is clearly an album that has been some time in the making and if time allows you to craft songs in this way then I’m in no hurry to hear his next album because I know it will be worth the wait.
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