Mixtapemotions

“Bad Dreams” by Deas Vail, Monday, May 8, 2023 + Deas Vail Track by Track

 

No matter how your Monday finds you, let’s unwind with an album that meant a lot to me nearly ten years ago, the first spring I spent in Korea. I don’t remember what first attracted me to Deas Vail‘s third and eponymous album, but once I started listening, I couldn’t stop. I also don’t know much about where the band members are now, whether or not they remain in music in any capacity. What I do know is that Deas Vail captured a moment perfectly. 


1. “Desire.” That being said, Deas Vail begins with my least favorite track. It’s not a bad song, and it clearly has the guitar motifs and the husband-wife duet sounds which will be important elsewhere in the album. Lyrically, “Desire” isn’t very interesting and it’s skip-able. But that’s my opinion. “Desire,” does, though have the most streams of the album.


2. “Sixteen” begins the energy that is consistent in the rest of the album. Warm guitar tones bathe the song in sunny nostalgia. It’s a love song reveling youth, but the now older speaker in the song offers insight about love that the sixteen-year-old wouldn’t know.

3. “Quiet Like Sirens.” Unlike the previous tracks, “Quiet Like Sirens” is the first song on the album that feels urgent. While their musical styles are quite different, I’ve often compared Deas Vail’s lead singer Wes Blaylock to the Silversun Pickups‘ Brian Aubert on certain songs. On “Quiet Like Sirens,” the guitars feel a little shoegazy, which makes the band feel a little like Silversun Pickups. 



4. “Summer Forgets Me” brings the album back to it’s upbeat constant. Lyrically, it’s a bit of a downer, pointing out that summers and summer romances aren’t ever the ideal “photographs” we remember.


5. “Towers” brings the album back to contemplation. “Towers”is a kind of us-against-the-world song, with imagery of a dense forest blocking the sun.

6. “Pulling Down the Sun” seems to build on the theme of “Towers,” but with a more upbeat melody. The verse feels like a ’60s take on shoegaze and the brilliant chorus elevates the song. Whereas “Towers” seems to deal with general darkness in humanity, “Pulling Down the Sun” seems to deal with the plight of orphans.

7. “Bad Dreams” is today’s song, which I’ve written about before. It’s one of the tracks on the album that gets difficult to distinguish from the others, though the songs don’t sound alike. 


8. “Wake Up and Sleep” breaks up the monotony that the album starts to get with the outro of “Bad Dreams.” There’s a kind of musical hypnosis that Deas Vail creates on this album and their debut All the Houses Look the Same. “Wake Up and Sleep,” though, is instantly catchy with a ’60s groove. It’s so catchy that you may feel you already know it even if you have never heard the song before. 


9. “Common Sense” is another standout track because of how different it sounds. The slow acoustic guitar builds the song lyrically until the speaker makes his point in the final line. 


10. “The Right Mistakes” returns the album back to its natural sound of unassuming, bright choruses. The song touches a little more on Christian language than the other tracks.

11. “The Meaning of a Word” is the most lyrically sparse track on the album, with one question repeated over a dreamy instrumental.


12. “Meeting in Doorways” is a kind of death tune, looking forward to the end of summer and turning of leaves. It’s the last track on the band’s final album, save for their Christmas EP.  I hope you enjoy this album as much as I have.