The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: The Mix

Above and right: Singer-songwriter David Adedokun's newest album contemplates the ups and downs of love and the meaning of it all.

Singer-songwriter David Adedokun comes across as a kind of expert on the broken heart. Credited as The Daylight Hours, his solo debut is called "How To Make A Mess of Things." With song titles like "Try to Understand," "Truth About Girls," "Dear John Reply," "Sleeplessness" and "Mr. Someone Else," "How to Make A Mess of Things" clearly contains its share of heartbreak and romantic problems.

Co-produced and engineered by former band mate Kenny McWilliams at McWilliams's own Archer Avenue Studios, the album features contributions from members of local bands such as the Magnetic Flowers, Falling Off A Building and Baumer.

The core of the album, however, is Adedokun's acoustic guitar and his soaring vocals. A conscious break from the more rock aesthetic of his previous band, Courage Riley, "How to Make a Mess of Things" finds Adedokun breaking new ground sonically and lyrically.

As Adedokun himself put it, "this record was definitely me doing my best to let go of my desire to always want to wrap things up with this pretty little bow at the end ... from a songwriting standpoint, I really kind of wanted to let that go because life doesn't always go that way."

In "Truth About Girls," Adedokun sings, "Never let a girl take your heart again/ for as long as you got one to defend ... you'll get to my age, and you'll wish you could go back in time and undo that first kiss/ Oh boy, you don't know what you're getting into./ My boy, don't say I didn't try and warn you."

Like many of the songs, the lyrics read like a dire, cynical look at love. However, contrasting the dark lyrics are Adedokun's beatific vocals, which give the listener a feeling of hopefulness.

The song that follows "Truth" is "Dear John Reply," a song about the post-breakup tailspin that many people find themselves going through.

"I feel like people fall in love with their pain a lot in the absence of whatever it is they originally fell in love with, and they use that pain as a surrogate," he explained, adding that "that song ["Dear John Reply"] is about a guy who I think does it the right way ... and the moment that he realizes that he is not cared for in the way that he cares."

"Only One Juliet" is another song on the album that Adedokun describes as "hopelessly hopeful." Adedokun says it's a song about a girl with whom you think you have special relationship, but then you look around and realize that she kind of has that "special" relationship with everybody, hence the lyric, "Somewhere there's someone you don't love, but you haven't met them yet." Another relationship song is "Mr. Somebody Else," about wishing you could be an entirely different person so that you could have a whole other shot with a person.

Adedokun isn't as sad and cynical as the album makes him seem, though. He had this to say about love: "There is really nothing like it ... it can do as much to build a person up as it can to tear them down, but we have to find love that does that, builds us up instead ... that challenges us, that makes us want to be better."

Adedokun appeared as the Daylight Hours at Headliners on Valentine's Day as part of their Love Stinks show. He will also be playing New Brookland Tavern on March 21. More information can be found on his Web site, myspace.com/thedaylighthoursmusic.

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