Music Review // Thomas Charlie Pedersen "Daylight Saving Hours"

https://soundcloud.com/user-656016410/sets/daylight-saving-hours //

"Daylight Saving Hours", as a concept not an album, is a funny thing to me because farmers used it and now it's just something that comes around twice a year to disrupt our sleeping habits.    Thankfully though, this album by Thomas Charlie Pedersen is only here to disrupt your life in the best possible way, which in some ways feels like taking the idea of "Daylight Saving Hours" back to mean something positive.

Right away this starts off with pianos and it reminds me of the opening track from that one Waking Ashland album I always go back and listen to after all these years.  There were quite a few bands that could be considered rock with the elements of emo in them, back in the early 2000's, who had that one piano song or even someone like Sherwood, and I feel like this is what that sound might come out like some twenty years later.

Melodies flow through acoustic pop but by the third song it's more of a dark folk.  For some reason these songs make me think about both swimming and John Lennon.    There are also these overlapping vocals on "Green Plateau", which can put you in a trance.   Aspects of the album such as that show that as much as you can think of this as being "voice + piano" or "voice + acoustic guitar", there are still elements which make it so much more than that simply stated.

"Sad To See You Go" has words and comes in at just under a minute (43 seconds to be precise) whilst "The Witty Moniker" is just over a minute long and instrumental- showcasing those different skills of Thomas Charlie Pedersen.   "Stay True" is a lot lighter- it's higher somehow- than the other songs, but it is also my favorite song on this album.   As we get towards the end, the songs can bring in strings and just kind of seem to reach that end in a perfectly fitting manner.

No matter how long you've listened to music or how you feel about different genres, the fact is that this album will likely throw you for a bit of a loop at first.   It took me a good number of times- it wasn't really until the fifth listen through that I feel like I got it.   And it's not just put it on in the car and then tune out and back in at random times, but it's actually paying attention to each note and not having your focus on anything else (often in the dark) It needs that kind of attention and if you're willing to give it you can see how special of an album this truly is.