Dan Cook - Whiskey Kisses (Little Roo Records)

It is fair to say that “When The Morning Comes,” Dan Cook’s debut single, proved to be one of the most exquisite and exciting calling cards a new, breaking artist has dropped in a long time. Naturally, the music industry was keen to see what he did next. Was that a fluke, a lucky first roll of the dice? Had he front-loaded his career and given the best that he had right from the off? Was it, god forbid, all downhill from here?

As soon as you hear “Whiskey Kisses,” you realize that all of your worst fears have been dispelled, and not only has he repeated the buzz and quality of that first sonic step, but if anything, he has exceeded it.

What Dan Cook does so well here, just as he did before, is the mixing of the singer-songwriter vibe with the full band sound, giving us the deftness
of the former wrapped around the energy of the latter. Where there might be acoustic strumming, there are incendiary guitar salvos; where we might expect acoustic chords ringing out and lilting rhythms, there are killer riffs and driving beats; where there might be gentle grooves, there are anthemic sonic sucker punches.

And so, too, is the opposite true. If the average indie, rock, or pop band might get bogged down with cliches and bravado, cooler-than-thou schtick, and transient, throwaway sounds, here we have an artist who has blown away all of the cobwebs, let the light in, and without changing too much of the existing format, offered us a vision of a bright new musical future.

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