REVIEW: Del Vertigo — On the Day That You Come To (EP)
Depending on your perspective, I think it’s a little difficult to escape some of the more esoteric themes in the new EP On the Day That You Come To from Del Vertigo. Although most are implied, there’s a sense of spirituality in this record that extends itself to the narratives in the title track, “Obsidian Hills,” and the full-bodied “In Dreams” without skipping a beat, and this feeling tends to stem from the relationship between creator and medium itself. Del Vertigo is using everything within his grasp to experiment with elements of sonic concept and lyrical expressiveness the same, and when you look at what his competition has been doing lately, there’s no debating whether or not On the Day That You Come To is already a stone-cold classic.
BANDCAMP: https://delvertigo.bandcamp.com/album/del-vertigo
Continuity exists less through lyrical themes in this EP than it does depth of sound, and you needn’t look past “Theres a Glimmer in the Thicket” or “The Fall” to understand what I mean by this. There’s so much more being conveyed to us, in a raw manner no less, just through the presence of the instrumentation in this record, and while I think there’s no denying some of the more intriguing aspects of the lyricism in On the Day That You Come To, you can’t debate the value of the musicianship here, especially as it stands when looking at the overall communicativeness of the piece as a whole. The bread and butter of Del Vertigo’s sound is conceptualism, and that’s a main takeaway in this release.
I like that our leading man is pushing the envelope with the instrumental side of “The Fall” and “Obsidian Hills” especially, and while I halfway expected as much after listening to some of his previous content again just recently, I was not anticipating as much of a rebuke of the status quo here as there is. There’s a lot to be gained in a project where the rulebook exists only as a guideline for what not to do, but Del Vertigo isn’t going quite that far with On the Day That You Come To. He’s capable of as much, and this is yet another major point that we’re to understand when listening to the complete tracklist of this record.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/on-the-day-that-you-come-to-ep/1614641748?uo=4
This is a lot more forward-thinking a look than what a lot of critics are going to be prepared for, but within the lens of rock n’ roll, especially in the progressive wing, that’s precisely what makes On the Day That You Come To such an interesting EP from beginning to end. Now that I’ve listened to this most recent effort from Del Vertigo a couple of times through, I’ll be the first to vouch for the credibility of the material here, as well as the overall control that Del Vertigo exhibits despite letting some of his more liberal tendencies run wild behind the board. In summary, On the Day That You Come To does what most prog records want to do — exist both for and within itself.
Colin Jordan
