Full disclosure: When I first glanced at this album on Bandcamp I thought it said Danny Drivr was from Australia and, when I started listening, I heard vague echoes of many beloved Flying Nun Records artists in the first few tracks; I thought perhaps some of that influence spilled over from New Zealand across the Tasman Sea on to this record. Upon closer inspection, I saw he is actually from Austria. To be specific, the wonderfully named City of Waidhofen An Der Ybbs, if you must know.
While my initial influence impression stands, there’s a much stronger effect at play – the 1960’s. Check out the organ sounds on “Late Bloomer” or toward the end of “You’re So Toxic” and you’d be forgiven for having difficulty placing the age of this music. That’s intentional, as Danny (a/k/a Daniel Hochpoechler) discloses “I’ve been listening to a lot of psychedelic and garage rock bands from the 60s before and during making this album…” His attempt to mix the old and the new is very successful. Maybe the best overall example is the track “Doing Dishes” which deftly mixes elements of dream pop and 60s psych in one tasty 3-minute morsel.
Lyrically, a lot of the songs deal with navigating early adulthood. While they sometimes express a bit of anxiety as adult life is being figured out, it’s never too depressing or heavy, and the music softens any blow. Some samples include “We all try so hard – To stay afloat and survive” (“Late Bloomer”), or the song “Everyday” that catches that feeling of “I’m OK (but maybe not),” trying to convince both the person you are speaking with and yourself, with its repeated “I’m good – Thank you.” And how many of us can relate to this from “Self-Care”: “All this mindless working – Always so boring – But I need my health-care baby.”
Overall, this is a collection of really catchy tunes featuring really good musicianship and production, and an interesting mix of influences. It does a nice job capturing a time in a young person’s life that we’ve all been through, or perhaps may be going through now.