Dillon Ryan & The Dream Romantic Live at Festival 506

By Keir Nicoll

This live set is a great introduction to a band that needs none. They sound very Cure-esque, as they ply their trade, on the grand music set. Dillon Ryan approaches the vocals and the same, as he strums away on his Rickenbacker. This show, as it appears from Festival 506, is one of 80's sensibility pop, rock and goth stylings. It takes the audience into this dark realm, with appropriate guitar and keyboard flourishes. Some of the guitar-lines are Cure, some verge on Johnny Marr. A very retro with revitalizing flavour to this music. In “The River of Past Reflections,” and “I Could Have,” the songwriter imagines the place of the soul in the music and the reflections that take one into the inner personal realm of darkness. In “Sudden Mystery,” Dillon Ryan writes of “taking a look at the future,” where someone can tell him what's wrong, as he looks also, at “scenes from a memory.” There is a showing of guidance about the directions in life. At this point, Ryan politely announces all of the musicians' names. As he does so, the surrounding incandescent light-bulbs, seem to take on an extra warmth. Indeed, the songs are a very warm sound as it is coming from the darkness of the soul. The last song in the set, “What Only Time Can Tell,” is filled with staggered drum-beats and “unfulfilled hopes.” Ryan seems to sing about the unknowingness of the life that we lead and the questions that arise in one that is directed somewhat unusually.