The Daylight Hours- How To Make A Mess of Things

The Daylight Hours is Columbia, SC’s own David Adedokun. Adedokun has been slowly but surely working on How To Make A Mess Of Things for over two years, since the break-up of his former band, Courage Riley. It was worth the wait. Adedokun blends an array of influences into an Americana-indie-pop dream, all the while highlighting his beautiful songwriting and emotive voice.

However, the record is a bitter pill coated in candy. While the music and Adedokun’s voice are both upbeat and hopeful, How To Make A Mess of Things is a song cycle about lost love, rejection, regret, and every other emotion connected with love gone wrong. My favorite tracks are the middle 3 of the album. The infectious “Truth About Girls” has some great lines like “oh boy, you don’t know what you’re getting in to/ My boy, don’t say I didn’t try and warn you” and “don’t take the poison yet, cause once it’s in you it stays there (referring to a first kiss)” The classically themed “Dear John Reply” is sandwiched nicely by “Truth” and perhaps my favorite song on the record, “Only One Juliet”. “Juliet” is about the girl that seems to like (love) everyone. You know that you are not as special to her as she is to you, but you can’t help yourself. But in the end as with all Adedokun’s songs, the narrator lets her go.

Smart songwriting, subtle guitar rhythms, and tastefully applied drums, keyboards, electric guitar, and lap steel are the hallmarks of this record. Hopefully, How To Make A Mess will bring Adedokun the recognition he deserves and expand his touring schedule across the southeast. Check him out at http://www.myspace.com/thedaylighthoursmusic