Jay Daniels - Lunette Tears

Hear The Track Here

Here's a long but heartening story. Imagine this, you come online a couple of years ago, all fired up with the zeal of uncovering the internet. You are a rock guitarist and although your kit isn't up to much, you think you have what it takes. Then some guy comes along, listens to what you put online and then proceeds to bite your critical ass each time you lay a track before him. A bit of a comedown, right? Welp, that is the position Jay (Jonti) Daniels found himself in with me. No matter which way he spun around, his material was just not doing anything for me. Believe me, I know what it's like to take hard reviews, I've had more than my fair share and some that still bring a blush to my cheeks to this day. How could I have been sooooo blind?, you know what I mean?

So what does this artist do about that?

Turns into a hip hop artist is what, although to my ears what he is doing has more (still) to do with rock than any form of hip hop I know. Still, that's just small and very bitter grapes, because - ta da - Lunette Tears is pretty much everything I have expected from this artist in the past and never gotten. If it takes a change of genre to do that, then so be it. It also proves a golden rule about reviews, it's just an opinion. If you get put off by a review then you never had it in you in the first place, believe me the things I say are FAR kinder than you would recieve in the real world. Nonetheless, all my criticism is for one reason and one reason only, to further the music. When it pays off, as it does in this case, it is a rare and wonderous event.

It isn't all beer and skittles though because as decent as Lunette Tears is, it still has some rough edges. However, compared to what came before, this is certainly something I feel Jay can be proud of, although not in a hip hop way. The reason I got interested in this guy in the first place was because he claimed to like and play like Jimi Hendrix and a statement like that is always going to interest me. Now, at least on this track, I see the glimmer of what he was talking about. He has managed to sew together an extremely passable backing track, a very good arrangement and some tasty licks to add the icing and -considering where we came from - this is a great listen. Stilll need to pay more attention to the finer points of the mix but this is definitely getting somewhere.

Tasty guitar based instrumental (and it's only 2:25)