Review Summary: Atmosphere, melancholy, and beauty
Take yourself back, if you can, to a time before Dan Avidan was best known for Ninja Sex Party or Game Grumps. Before he was even much of a household name, Mr. Avidan was part of a duo known as Skyhill, formed in 2006. Alongside Peter Lennox, who would supply synths and guitars, the duo would release a single, 10-track album,
Run With the Hunted, before disappearing for years. I remember hearing this and wishing that there was more to be listened to from this duo. Well, with a new album from Skyhill finally out, I decided to go back and see if this debut really was as special as I remember.
It’s tough to fit this album into the context of Dan’s larger body of work. This is a unique beast, not comedic, not really a balls-to-the-wall rocker, but rather an atmospheric electronic album that deals very overtly with themes of heartbreak and strained relationships. I think the best way to nail down this album’s theme would be to imagine a cloudy night, with a full moon and a sky filled with stars. There’s beauty in the deep blue, and it can easily be seen, but it’s masked behind grey. That sort of gets across the general mood
Run With the Hunted provides over its 40 minutes.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you, then let me present “Hands on the Water”, which draws listeners into the world of Skyhill with glittering synth notes and an orchestral backing, along with drum machines that scream mid-2000's. Seriously, this album has a certain charm to its synths and percussion that seeps through every pore of the instrumentation. You can almost see the old GarageBand interface scrolling by.
The album knows how to keep itself varied too. “Hands on the Water” is a faster, slightly more uptempo track, “Different Frequencies” is far slower and moodier, while “Black and White” presents itself as the happiest song on the LP, basically a straight-up pop rock track, only for its second verse to reveal far more melancholy behind the surface. Those are the first three tracks of the album, in order of how they appear.
Elsewhere, there’s “The City As You Walk”, easily the most tender-sounding track to be found here, and my second favorite song on
Run With the Hunted. This is where Dan’s voice truly shines, especially on the backing lines. It’s hard for me to not get emotional whenever I listen to this track. Dan and Lennox knew how to poke and prod at the listener’s feelings with this work, that much is certain.
And I couldn’t go through album highlights without mentioning the gorgeous title track that serves as the closer for
Run With the Hunted. “Different Frequencies”’s moodier synths return, backed by one of the strongest guitar sections on the entire album, painting such a vivid picture that you can practically see the road Dan sings about, stretching out in front of you. The ending also serves as a perfect bookend to the album, a melancholy vocal reprise of the very same “na-na-nana"s that graced our ears on “Hands on the Water”.
It’s obviously not a perfect album. There are a few awkward transitions here and there, “Storms of September” is a bit too long for its own good, despite being the only song here that actually sounds angry (mostly in terms of the lyrics, and Dan’s vocal delivery), and “Black and White (Reprise)” makes the strange decision to merge the lyrics of “Black and White” with the instrumentals of “The City As You Walk”, feeling a little unnecessary in the broader context of the album, but these are more akin to whingeing nitpicks than genuine fault lines in the album’s foundation.
Run With the Hunted is a promising debut, and once might’ve stood as a wonderful example of a one-hit wonder. But, Skyhill has risen from the depths several times in the years that would follow, between two singles in 2015, 2018, and 2023, and as of yesterday, a second album. Whether or not it lives up to the expectations set by
Run With the Hunted remains to be seen. In the meantime, I’ll keep this album spinning. Maybe you will too.
