(4 / 5)
Hifi Sean and David McAlmont release their delightful second album, “Daylight” in three days’ time, the date pushed back from June to August. Definitely a project well worth waiting for.
The album will be released on vinyl LP, CD and digital formats. There’s a Deluxe limited edition ‘Neon Orange’ vinyl edition with free orange flexi-disc with the track “Orange Sunshine” , a signed art print, and downloadable lyric book.
“Daylight” is the follow-up to their acclaimed 2023 debut, “Happy Ending.” The 12 songs on “Daylight” celebrates, expresses and explores the colours of summer. It will be the first of two albums from the duo in 2024, with the sister album, “Twilight”, slated for release on the first day of winter in December.
“Daylight” represents a significant moment in Hifi Sean and David McAlmont’s partnership. It was produced in a burst of collaborative energy, with both composers “channelling and sharing.”
It is said that, “the writing, at times, seemed to guide the material with its own momentum”, seemingly then defying the old saying, “that difficult second album”. The dozen songs written by Sean and David, the album produced and mixed by Sean.
Out now is the single, “Sad Banger”, lifted from the album. [I wondered if they’d seen my current car and named the record after it!] Hifi Sean says about the title of the new track: “A personal DJ terminology I use when I play uplifting euphoric melancholy pumpers in a set. ‘Play me the sad old bangers’.
“David in the studio asked me how my set was the previous night, to which I replied I was in the mood to play lots of sad bangers all night. He had never heard this description before.
Next day the music had a new fancy overcoat. I love that the term might now be introduced by us into the public domain.”
Producer and DJ Hifi Sean aka Sean Dickson, was the singer in the band Soup Dragons, and David McAlmont of course, is perhaps best known as 50% of the dream team former partnership with Suede star Bernard Butler.
But Hifi Sean and David McAlmont are not trading on those past glory days, and this new album more than sets that thought in stone for the talented pair.
It’s a tough ask to sum up the style of this record and these well crafted songs in a few words. They don’t really sound like anyone else currently out there, to my lugholes. And it is a broad church of genres and styles they nod to and dip into across the 12 songs. All pretty upbeat.
The vocals are, as one may expect from Mr McAlmont, drenched with an innate, dreamy soulfulness as per usual with this cool cat, and the production values serve and honour the material and those faultless vocal performances. Definite vibes of church/gospel peppered throughout.
If sheer class and quality tunes are your thing, grab this one and don’t rely on me or others to adequately describe it for you. The record deserves widespread attention, as does this duo for all seasons…
“Daylight” is spirted, happy dance-pop with a layer of electro goodness, and may well prompt a wiggle of the hips and a shake of the booty from all who hear it. Roll on the next one, pleasingly due soon…
By Andy Faith
(1 / 5) ‘Dull Zone’
(2 / 5) ‘OK Zone’
(3 / 5) ‘Decent Zone’ (4 / 5) ‘Super Zone’
(5 / 5) ‘Awesome Zone’
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