On the surface, Nick Doneff’s The Late August Days feels like a laid-back listen. And in a way, that feeling tracks. Still, as you start to peel back those layers of nonchalance, you’ll find an album rife with nostalgia and quiet life lessons.
The album opens with the title track, which has Doneff leaning on happy memories as a crutch through dark times. It’s a sunny track, with harmonica throughout that brings to mind the wail of a cicada on a summer afternoon. He builds a sunny, hazy atmosphere that sets the tone for the rest of the album.
Though, more often than not, The Late August Days is not all clear skies. Doneff tends to sing with a sort of bittersweet wisdom. Much of the album spends time reflecting—current troubles, past ones. It comes in the meandering feeling of wondering where you took a wrong step in a relationship, or in the harsh words hanging on the rim of a beer bottle when it’s well past midnight.
And maybe that sort of feeling is a deliberate choice. “This Is Where It Ends” has Doneff stewing in vices and in the willingness to give in to mental hurdles. It feels like both a final stand against self-sabotage and a total inability to overcome it.
Even as dim as that prospect might sound, it’s an easy message to tune out. Doneff and his slew of collaborators combine their instrumental prowess for a cohesively tranquil layer across every song. “Nights and Days” is home to a dreamy instrumental break that takes up most of the second half of the song. It’s easy to get lost in the sway of it—to picture a summer night, the rediscovery of old flames.
And then there’s the Prince Edward Island-based folk gem Catherine MacLellan, who steps in for harmonies on a majority of the tracks. She and Doneff are a beautiful blend, both with just the right softness in their voices to really lend to a song’s emotion. A stand-out in this case is “True True Love”, where Doneff looks to the future where the rare love to end all love awaits.
It’s the sort of hopefulness that persists even in the album’s more potentially sombre moments. Doneff lingers on the importance of each moment, each choice—even when it seems like the wrong one. Because to Doneff, all of it adds up to a lifetime of meaning.