Exclusive: Run Dan Run - Normal
Writer: Amy Durrant on 5th January, 2012 Photographer: Megan Elger
As far as genres of today’s music-sphere go, it’s becoming increasingly more dangerous to pen the likeness of a band to ‘indie-rock’ and get it to stick with minimal damage. Refreshingly, far from it in the case of Charleston S.C. boys Run Dan Run; who drag the title ‘indie-rock’ away from the cliche and into the beautiful world of the lyrically sensitive with their LP Normal.
Lovesick Animal, featuring the honest vocals of leading guy Dan McCurry but over-cut with an aerial guest vox, produces the simplest of riffs to modest effect. It’s not overplayed and the lyrics come ready plucked from the bands heartstrings, leaving lines like “You’ve got martyrdom all on your face/Holding expectations of a saint” to swill round your head somewhat like a musical oak-aged wine. Not to mention the complimentary brass instrumentals that neatly polish off the track with precise finesse.
The more experimental, progressive songs off the LP like False-Hearted Lover and Spelling Words perfectly portray the band’s emotive side amid the galvanized riffing; layering the melodies with echoing percussion and reverberating guitars. The gentle lapping of the occasional chimes, particularly in Spelling Words, allows the minimal lyrics to float very lightly above the layers in an atmosphere of their own.
As the LP rounds off with In Parts, beginning with an almost ecclesiastical tune that rings like the pipes of an organ, it’s hard not to mellow down and enjoy the sweeping scape of the lead vox line as it works together with the humming bridges to toll the end of a truly stirring album. It’s safe to say that with tracks like these, RDR’s album is far from normal.