The Dawn Collective

Drum Media reviewed our album today…I think they said some nice things, but you can decide for yourself:

The Dawn Collective
Save A Place For Us
Green / MGM

The cover of The Dawn Collective’s Save A Place For Us draws you in and lets you ignore the old “can’t judge a book (or record) by its cover”. It shows a cluster of trees growing on a bleak hill, shot on grainy film with an almost sepia tone. It’s both unsettling and beautiful, yet strangely hopeful. The music within matches these impressions.

The music, as the press guff notes, is hard to categorise. At its core it’s indie-folk, but there are flourishes of traditional Eastern European music, splashes of jazz and streaks of progressive rock. A Russian Trilogy is bombastic, galloping and soaring like Muse. Eat, Drink, For Tomorrow We Die is a gravely singalong and A Handful Of Moments is a pleasantly off-beat country dirge, while Stop This Worry is a raucous, hysterical alternative rock track that unexpectedly veers into a lovely bridge before crashing violently into a brass section.

Producers Tim Whitten and Tony Dupé have done an exceptional job, particularly Whitten. The album has an epic, expansive feel to it. The crescendo of penultimate track The Art Of Longevity is thrilling, as strings shriek over a beat that sounds like the thundering hooves of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Save A Place For Us is not an easy album. It languished in the stereo for weeks before I really understood or even liked it. But save a place for The Dawn Collective on your album shelf. With time, this release proves itself to be a grand and glorious piece of dark, orchestral folk.

Liam Casey
Drum Media Issue 932 - November 18th 2008 

Our Hopetoun gig last week got reviewed in Brag - in case you missed it here it is:

The Dawn Collective
Hopetoun Hotel, Surry Hills
Thursday July 31

Nothing reaffirms the reality of the Sydney music scene like a Thursday night show at the Hopetoun. It’s not all flash and pizzazz; sometimes it’s about solid songs played in a regular pub by regular people. And sometimes, the lights don’t even work.

…

For some reason, I’ve never seen The Dawn Collective before. And judging by the half-full Hoey, their reputation hasn’t spread around the music-loving public of Sydney, either. Which is a shame, because as much as this sounds like a dross line from a press release, these guys really are one of this city’s best-kept secrets. Sick of the vacuous, hollow bands that pride style over substance? Check out The Dawn Collective. Their music is hard to pigeonhole: it’s got the austerity of The Frames but guitar aggressiveness encroaching on alternative-rock territory. Marry that with melancholic cello lines, and it’s a sound that beautifully and effortlessly traverses territory that other bands wouldn’t dare tread.

They’re releasing an album later in the year, and I hope that it won’t be passed over as a throwaway disc from a small-time independent act. There’s a depth and substance to the music of Dawn Collective that demands attention.

Dom Alessio

The Brag Issue 273 - August 4th 2008