Dylan Menzie, the folk powerhouse of Prince Edward Island, has returned in style with Lost in Dreams, a 10-track extravaganza. The album is incredibly multi-faceted, with Menzie electing to release it in three separate parts, each one focusing on one of Menzie’s many styles. With a solid quantity of the artist’s top-notch style and the presence of some experimentation, there’s plenty to unpack here; most of it fantastic.
One such style is the poppier side of the songwriter’s work, exemplified by the track “Wild.” Bluesy undertones and a smoothness unique to Menzie ever-so-slightly contrasts the tune’s desire to break free from complacency, but the sense of wonder offered up by the chorus makes up for it.
“One Heart to Another” follows up the artist’s pop flavours with a tune fit for a casual ballroom, with positively hypnotic percussion pairing with a quickened pace relative to the rest of the album. Having been cut from the same artistic cloth, it’s no surprise that the smoothness we heard in “Wild” makes another, subtle appearance.
Menzie’s take on a more country-oriented sound (consisting of “Have Faith,” “Church Bells,” and “Spirit”) offers up some of the album’s brightest spots, but overall is a step below the artist’s full potential. “Have Faith” is an incredibly warm and welcome sentiment with one particular heart-wrencher of a lyric (“Have faith in what’s written in time”), and the twangy strings found in “Spirit” set an eerily fascinating mood. Beyond this, however, the Americana-inspired path doesn’t quite have that same, characteristic punch as Menzie’s more stylized tunes, such as his aforementioned pop section or previous singles “Ivory” or “You Could Be My Queen.”
There’s a certain theme of nostalgia I couldn’t help but notice in Menzie’s latest. The titular track, “Lost in Dreams” opens with a sound that felt very vintage, as though I were listening to remastered audio from the 1950s. Followed closely by a slight tenderness that soon becomes the majority of the track, you can feel all the heart behind Menzie’s instruments and vocal cords.
The nostalgia train doesn’t stop, though. “Fran’s Song” honours and pines memories shared with someone from the past, exploring the important but overlooked theme of withered friendship. And “Goodnight, Sweetheart” is a positively touching tribute to a loved one who has passed on.
My personal favourite, “Coocoora” caught me completely off-guard, as such a word hadn’t existed before now, so I hadn’t the slightest clue what to expect. What I got was an utterly satisfying, thematically-compliant lull, with a lovely mixture of strings both plucky and airy, and the atmosphere of a lullaby that my mother may have sung to me when I was a child.
Dylan Menzie is one of Atlantic Canada’s most dazzling stars in the music scene and, despite a small, country-themed bump in the road, Lost in Dreams will exemplify this for listeners old and new.