Davy Era, as an artist, tells much without saying very much at all in his Spotify profile. The origins of his stage name are made evident enough by his music’s credits, listing the composer, lyricist, and producer as David Correia Viera, yet on the whole Davy allows his music to speak for itself. With only an acoustic guitar and a clear, resonant tenor, we are told a short story:
“Hey come on over/I’ve got something to show a friend/we’ve got nothing to do again/so give up everything, come running in/’Cause you know what it’s like to be all alone”
As the melody tugs us along like the introductory theme to a feel-good sitcom, the sounds of a quick call made to one’s friend (or, perhaps hopefully more) to fill a void of loneliness. That void may not be borne of carnal desire, per se; the inviting sound as Davy’s guitar amps up, yet instead of harshing this tender noise, the addition of electric guitars increases that warmth. Davy quells all doubt with a plea for his “baby” to come home. This is a romantic ache. Davy continues:
“Hey come on over/I’ve been thinkin’ it’s been too long/since we tried and got it wrong/so give it another shake, make the same mistakes/And we’ll know, that I’m a fool for thinking this way/Come over again, it’s over again”
More context is fed to us in drips: This is far from the first or last call the singer has made to their hot-and-cold love. When the same void calls a second time, the lyrics reference a falling out, yet desperately seek to appeal in the hopes that it may be filled for good this time. Unfortunately, the cycle is seemingly doomed to continue, all as the accompanying sound stays so deceptively friendly—This must be reflective of the inability to remove the “rose-colored glasses” worn in a dysfunctional relationship until the fog in one’s mind clears, left with the intolerable reality of… What else, but loneliness?
“Hey come on over/I’ve been mullin’ it all in my head/Maybe you had a point when you said/We’d be better off thinkin’ other thoughts/And we’ll know what it’s like to be all alone”
With each evolution of this refrain, we see a little more progress made—Yet, in truth, this takes one step forward and one step back to the same use of the singer’s paramour as nothing but a cure for loneliness. There is an acknowledgment that this relationship is an untenable one, yet in the final hook, we see how quickly this apparent self-awareness in our narrator begins to crumble.
“So baby, come home, let it all go/I’m thinkin’ about another way out/And it’s everything/And you’re everything/’Cause I’m everything, yeah I’m everything/So come over again/It’s over again(x2)”
The cycle repeats as the singer offers very little in the way of actionable steps to repair the relationship and instead offers, ultimately, himself, driven by his own wants for the object of his
inconsistent affections. The guitar and drums slowly fade out as a vicious wheel continues to turn and turn.
In contrast, the track to follow, “Coming Down”, is a gentle folksy tune plucked on an acoustic guitar carried by the faint, sweet sound of a violin. The tone is far softer, yet more remorseful and cognizant as the song seems to somberly reflect on the singer’s past through the invocation of a walk through a church’s graveyard.
“Church bells ring, haunting, in the waking hour/I’m all alone this morning, listening, cowered/For the first time they’re ringing true/Sloppy rhythms singin’ old rushin’/(Russian?) blues”
I am unsure if the final line of this verse is intentional wordplay or merely a mishearing of an intentionally slurred accent, though I find the former unlikely as the only “Russian Blue” I can imagine is a rather gorgeous breed of cat. This aside, the lyrics now show a deeper understanding of the world around the narrator; the ability to hear the ringing of the church bells “true” may symbolize a sudden sense of clarity from realization. It is often thought that one’s life changes, for better or for worse, after a sufficient shock brings enough trauma to shift one’s perception. Perhaps, if these songs are connected, the final end to an unhealthy on-again-off-again relationship has brought the narrator to realize how his actions had harmed the one he called his love.
The second and final verse reveals the metaphor invoked bit by bit:
“Graveside visits on the walk to bed/Careful not to mind the ghosts in my head/Playing crypt keeper, played your fool/I’ve been stuck minding what’s left to lose”
Here, we see the metaphor of walking through one’s bedroom with the somber grief of walking through a graveyard, guarding little reminders of what had been lost with the silent vigil of a “crypt keeper” minding a mausoleum. The ghosts in one’s mind may refer to the happy memories created in the heightened passion of a past love, or may even refer to those in the narrator’s life that death had truly taken from him; the point remains that now, even his bedroom feels like nothing more than a cemetery for what residual happiness might be found through nostalgia. This is far from atypical; the tradition of a wake following a funeral is meant to give grieving friends and family time to remember and honor the deceased with happy memories and celebration of those times past. Even so, I am sure we have all met someone who could not move on from their grief, and know just how deep such pain can run (even if only by proximity). This song is a full minute shorter than the first track, yet conveys just as much depth about the characters Davy Era creates for his storytelling through clever writing and thematic sound; the choice of instrumentation, voicing, and mastery of folk idiosyncrasies tickles one’s ventral vagal complex just as easily as a smile or sneer.
All in all, Davy Era proves my initial thesis: His music speaks for itself, telling a story through multiple layers of involvement and fully immersing the listener’s emotions to let them bear witness to these tender moments of weakness. The weakness of the flesh, the weakness of the heart, the mind, the spirit; it is all on display, and through lyric and guitar we see it all spilled before us to appreciate and absorb. This is not to be taken as disparagement, nor is weakness inherently a bad thing. Rather, weakness is a natural state of humans; our concepts of “strength” and “resilience” versus “weakness” and “vulnerability” are in fact fluid rather than set in stone, and thus, I feel all of us can be strong in some moments and weak in others. It is not and should not be a source of shame. I highly recommend Davy to any who feel so isolated in their weakness that they feel they cannot be understood, so ashamed that they wish not to share it but to prod at it while sitting alone in their bedroom; while Davy Era keeps fast to the folk singer tradition of storytelling, his stories show the reality of “strength’s” fluidity, and may lead you to a far more gentle realization than any sudden shock would.
Written by Alexei Lee
