Album Notes

On a day when the apocalyptic headline in the Star Tribune told of the sun's disappearance for the remainder of the year, a lazy, but intense whiskey voice escaped from the speakers of my stereo, commiserating with me on a sunless Minnesota morning, "Took a vacation/ to the state hospital." Darin Wald is the lead singer of local alt-country band Big Ditch Road and as a listener might expect on an album named "Suicide Note Readers Companion," Wald knows how to capture the mood of a gray and cold winter's day.

My living room on a gray winter day where I kept turning up the volume on the stereo as Big Ditch Road 's "Seven Hours" played on repeat, so that I could feel the bass guitar rattling my insides. This song is a story of numbness to the world, induced by living life and the sometimes-painful steps required to keep on living. This is the kind of song that I want to tell everyone about, but I know that even if they might like it or even if they might really love it, they will never be able to feel what I feel when I listen to it. What I feel is an unexplainable connection to a dark mood, a cold day and the perfect soundtrack.

"What you did or you didn't do/ Some things they have to keep away from you," the song continues. Just as eventually the sun will sneak through a blanket of dark clouds, optimism escapes between the seams of Wald's lyrics, "Sometimes I wish that I never left/ It's the first night I ever." The lyric ends and the listener is left to decide the fate of the song. Is the future hopeful? Is it miserable? Well, are you an optimist or a pessimist?

The vocals give way to the aching guitar, which bleeds into a fuzzed out, echoing and heartbreaking flourish of aggressive sad tone, which shoot through your chest and shake your heart so you can hear it beating in time to the punched guitar. Sometimes hope lives in the words that aren't said. This record was released by Eclectone Records.