Michael Rault – It’s a New Day Tonight

Michael Rault’s audible affection for rock’n’roll history spans from the genre’s seventies heyday right up until yesterday. His sleeves are emblazoned with influences, but his firm grasp of past and present stylings fuse seamlessly on It’s a New Day Tonight. The fuzzy lo-fi of his previous full-length Living Daylight has been subdued, opting instead to let his crystalline melodies radiate in the spotlight.

The Canadian songster uprooted himself from home soil to record at Daptone's House of Soul Studio in Brooklyn. Their devotion to the analogue process allows Rault’s sound to be exhibited with the richness it deserves. Couple this organic treatment with the album’s thematic focus on nocturnal happenings and damn do dreamy fireworks start flying. Mid-tempo delights permeate from cover to cover with persistent reference to the mind’s sleepy wanderings.

Album opener I’ll Be There is fit with a folk-rock stride that evokes the verve of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Sleep With Me’s lush string arrangements and friendly falsetto is a lullabied soft-rock lovely. Dream Song weaves a beautiful path through the night with its rhythmic steel string, sedative synth and tender backing vocals, letting us slip away behind closed eyes. Out of the Light skirts the periphery of psych, but Rault keeps it grounded with a joyful hook, serving as a reminder of rock’s once-greater presence in the charts.

It’s a New Day Tonight is a highly polished vehicle that demands to be driven at twilight with the roof down, allowing for its passengers to drift off to the engine’s dulcet purr and the wind’s gentle caress.

Listen to: I’ll Be There, Out of the Light, Sleep With Me