Waiting for a revelation? Well, hand on heart, you’re unlikely to get it on Dakona’s debut album, ‘Perfect Change’. What you do get though is a perefectly consumate slice of light alternative rock.
Signed up recently by cocky upstarts, Maverick Records, Vancouver based, Dakona peddle the sort of young, serious and intense brand of rock favoured by the likes of Nada Surf, Atticus Fault, White Light Motorcade, Dredg, and Audiovent. A departure, however, comes in the form of some faint alt-country leanings. Tracks like ‘Revelation’, ‘Trampoline’, and ‘Richest Man In The World’ take the near best moments of the Gin Blossoms and Ryan Adams to provide some tender and effortlessly melodic moments.
Self-critical, emotional, the album begins with the hard driving rain of neglect and the workings of a beaten heart. Twisty, turney and relying on some fine guitar flourishes courtesy of Brook Winstanley, the first four or five songs stand miles apart from the middle stages of the album, where things start to deteriorate into some rather bland, post-Bon Jovi, light rock kinda thing (the greater part of ‘Untouchable’, ‘Trust’, ‘Revolving’ etc). What connects them is single contender ‘Good’ – a song that somehow manages to meld the worlds of scat-rock and alt-rock into a catchy, if slightly uncomfortable, mongrel hybrid.
It’s not all bad; it’s not all good. What ‘Perfect Changes’ does capture though, is a band at an important crossroads. Which road do they take? the safe and the light or the rocky and alternative?