Sunday 8 November 2015

Wednesday: The Dear Hunter - Is There Anybody Here?

     Regular readers will know by now that, although this is ostensibly a blog about heavier music, when I find something that's good, I calls 'em like I sees 'em whether it's metal or not. If your musical taste is, shall we say, more limited, hopefully I've been able to teach you that there's good stuff out there in virtually every genre. If, however, this is a lesson you've yet to absorb, I've got just the band for you.

     The aforementioned regular readers (I know you exist, I just know it!) should at least have heard the name The Dear Hunter before, but for the latecomers: singer-songwriter Casey Crescenzo started genre-spanning prog rock act The Dear Hunter as a side project while he was in post-hardcore outfit The Receiving End of Sirens. Unfortunately, the promising Sirens have since broken up, but the silver lining to that cloud is that The Dear Hunter has become Casey's main project -- and what a project it's been!

     So far, The Dear Hunter's catalogue includes four album-length "acts" of a planned six-act/album arc, the Colour Spectrum album/set of EPs, the 2013 "one-off" album Migrant, a couple of live albums, and a handful of other EPs -- all in the last ten years or so. Busy guy, right? Even better than Casey's prolific productivity is his wide-ranging creativity: it might not be metal, but The Dear Hunter songs always have enough cool bits to keep even metalheads like me interested. Case in point: "Is There Anybody Here?", taken from The Dear Hunter's latest record Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise, a melancholy, dreamy, downtempo kind of number that morphs into a big rocking guitar solo towards the end, reminiscent of classic rock legends like Pink Floyd. Appetite whetted yet? Thought so. Check it out.

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