Dream Affair – Endless Days [Avant!] // Grade: B+

Back in 2009, from the “industrial outskirts” of Brooklyn, came Dream Affair with All I Want, a debut EP worth of material that, for those swimming around to the burgeoning ‘Grave Wave’ spread, marked a strident yet confident step toward a promising document of romantic isolation in an age where 24/7 connectivity has left many of us unaware of a time where simply sitting and thinking was the best way to procure meaning about something. Comment fields be damned, it was the sort of dark and precious thing that existed under its own contemporary invention. At its core was the fantastic “Silent Story” a precise and trouncing confession of love and loss and how it does in-fact never end, this range of breakup emotions we deal with.

Formed in Philadelphia as the guitar-focused project from  Hayden Payne then of Void Vision, Dream Affair continue their progression and return with Endless Days a full-length still marked by the same sort of blunt seclusion and dragging existence of before. Available physically from Italy’s Avant! Records and released digitally by the band, the trio’s venture into LP land draws ample similarities to their revered EP, but the biggest change comes from tracks that are cleaner, clearer and now supported by a female- vocal/keyboardist Abby Echiverri. No longer dominated by Payne’s brooding croon, Dream Affair confess here that they’ve certainly let a bit of sunshine through their shades.

Marked by what a press release describes as the cold dichotomy “between bleak indifference and struggling emotions,” Endless Days details specific things like the meaninglessness of apologies and how to react when pushed to conflict. Crisper than “All I Want” and still more punk than any ___-wave tag you can lob, the album’s standouts are found in “Apology” and the Cure’s early-era craft; “Drifting’s” cacophony, chorus-backing guitar; the Payne/Echiverri folk ballad “Until the Fall” and of course, the fundamental “Silent Story” now re-recorded and included here. It very easy to mention how much Dream Affair relies on shelter from the post punk/goth rock umbrella where textbook mentions like Warsaw/Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Magazine, The (early) Cure, Bauhaus, Wax Trax’s heyday or the insurmountably distant production of one Martin Hannett are increasingly bumping elbows for space. Where it differs is how much Dream Affair ceases to bend a knee at the synth-heavy, shiny “pop” mentality that’s ultimately been built out of the aforementioned scene and its, uh, “rebirth.” See how the likes of Interpol, Editors or She Wants Revenge can pull one shivering, angular guitar line out from under the umbrella, drench it in synths, arena rock choruses and well-financed production value and still get away with not being that lost under a generalized and modern “post punk” tag.

More a part of whatever rebirth it is that’s happening, I’d like to imagine that Dream Affair know that instead of waiting under the umbrella for the rain to stop, they are dragging the thing behind them, leaving a sense that the ghosts in the walls they’re referencing aren’t going anywhere, so why not create something with mood and space that elegantly cites their heroes while also creating something mysterious enough to surprise and please whoever it is that flips the disc around to find a date stamp not of 1984, but of 2011.

- The Holloweyed