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[Iz 🌟]

Days of Thunder review:

(scores are an attempt to not be ALL 7/10 so a score below that =/= awful)

Track 1: Clearly the title track, it has a lot of repeating of Days Of Thunder throughout it. It seems like a fairly pleasant indie-pop song with pretty standard male vocals, although that instrumental undercurrent that sounds like Baker Street with a slightly different tune is quite endearing. 7/10

Track 2: Another male-vocal electronica song, which is a theme of this CD I would discover, a few slight synths. I’m not sure what the vocals remind me of quite, but they’re soft and lovely, and it’s a nice chill track, not something I’d go out of my way to listen to but I don’t mind it. 6/10

Track 3: Guess the vague genre that I ascertain this one is? It’s something about a summer lover, so I guess that’s the title, but it’s a bit more languid than the previous two and I’m not as keen, would put it as about a –4/10

Track 4: I get the feeling that this song samples (rather heavily!) Cassie’s Me & U unless I’m completely misremembering how that sounds. It’s more involved and synthy than Le Youth’s C O O L. Without that sample this would be a pretty generic modern “”Spotify playlist”” song, with it, as I like that song, there’s a bit of interest enough to rescue the CD from the downward spiral, although I wouldn’t say this is better than the original or Le Youth - 6/10

Track 5 - Starting with a chant that makes me think of a rap, it quickly emerges that I’ve stumbled into a sample section of this CD, as this is basically Fergie’s Glamorous mixed up a bit, which I dislike. To its credit, it’s not as awful as the more well-known version because the extra speed in this mix adds a bit of life to it but still the notes are the same and so there isn’t enough for me to LOVE it – 6/10 (and the owner of the CD wilts away at my general indifference)

Track 6 – According to this song, we were ‘born to be wasted’. My general if not absolute sobriety disagrees, although perhaps it just means that we were born to be naked, which is biologically more accurate. The song is a bit dull at first but it starts picking up in the second half and is a rather pleasant male electropop listen by the end – 7/10

Track 7 – This gets more and more shoegazey by the minute. It’s dominated by ‘your sex is a dream’ which is what made me think of the dream pop aspect, but it’s of that sort of sound at least. I’m sort of okay with it but as with some others, I don’t have enough meaning with it to enjoy its slowness and so it needs to be a bit more upbeat to keep me interested. 5/10

Track 8 – This is Lean On, so we’re back to the samples, except this is more like a straight remix, with the same song structure. There’s a disappointing thing about this, it’s entirely just Lean On but cleaned up of any breakdowns for… very little in return if I’m honest. It’s just… flat notes instead. 8/10 for the Lean On parts given that it’s great but become a bit of a tired song in the last couple of years, 0/10 for the small changes they’ve done to it.

Track 9 – I’m starting to get the feeling that this could be an almost entirely sampled CD and the ones where I haven’t noticed it I just wasn’t familiar with the original song enough to know it. This one is a pretty much mashupped George Michael, taking bits from Careless Whisper and Never Gonna Dance Again. While I’ll still say that it’s a little slow for my tastes, the wall of sound and hearing two songs I like in new contexts (I can never resist the Careless Whisper riff), I think this is easily the best so far – 8/10

Track 10 – Now this starts off way more like my style, there’s a good tempo and there are some stabbing synths. I was unsure on the vocals at the start but they’re growing on me over the course of the song, it’s a decent length at 5 minutes, though that’s about average for this CD. They start to get really compelling, I think I like this. Also the key lyric here is ‘dandy juliet’. Hmm. I might have been guessing Dandy had he not been revealed, I’m still not sure who’s this is. But no, I really like this song, especially when the different vocals come in, there’s a slightly feminine sounding one and even the hint of someone trying their hand at a harsh thing. Love it! 9/10

Track 11 – Seems like a rather pleasant electropop song, I like the tone of the singer, it’s not QUITE at the Lights level of perfection but it’s reasonably close to the Lauren Mayberry mark on that scale, albeit with a bit less production. Um, there are a lot of intriguing sounds aside from the vocals on this as well and it’s a good listen overall– 8/10

Track 12 – Well, we ride out the penultimate track on this CD with a synthy instrumental of Summertime Sadness – which honestly I’m really quite enjoying a lot – not just because I like the original song but this is really delicate and is just a bit of distortion away from some of the soundtrack genre I’ve always loved. 9/10

Track 13 – The final track opens with some heavy rock chords, is this it? It seems like it’s slightly synth-rock, but the vocals aren’t quite as engaging as I want them to be, it’s like a singer got herself a few rock chords on hire more than being a rock artist. Lyrics are nice and it’s still an enjoyable 7/10 listen however.

Overall, for me, it was a weak start but the second half of the CD was a lot better than the first – I still wouldn’t say I’m the ideal recipient of this though, if you like any of the following a) sampled tracks b) mid-to-low tempo songs c) anything in the indie-pop-tronica umbrella, I’d recommend giving this a listen.

As for who it is, I couldn’t say. I was thinking Dandy but as he’s done, it could be RFC or Harve, I’m not sure who’d specifically go for such a sample-heavy tracklist. Could also be Dan doing indie because of all of the samples.