Music Review: Dion Roy - Gallery

New York’s Dion Roy is clearly a man who expresses himself best through his music. Described as somewhat guarded and totally without any sort of pretentiousness Dion simply lets his music do the talking.

The result is an instantly engaging, highly personal debut album, Gallery, written largely around his own life experiences he still manage to connect powerfully to the listeners own emotions.

Despite containing songs of failed relationships, troubled times, and unrequited love Gallery is anything but doom laden or morose. Instead Dion instantly draws us in with his warmth, honesty, and unfailing ability to write catchy and highly memorable choruses. This is the sort of CD that will have you annoyingly humming to everyone and anyone in the office without you even realizing it.

This is certainly the case with the opener “Come Back Around”. Inside its uptempo, pop based, hook riddled styling it would appear to be a song about addictive love. Dion is not one for lengthy introductions to his songs; he prefers to let the audience draw their own emotions and experiences from them. His writing radiates a glowing warmth, a genuine humanity, and a disarming honesty that makes him so instantly likeable.

Dion leans, clean cut, against his guitar case staring out into the mid-distance on the cover. Born in Namibia he was raised partly in South Africa and latterly in New Jersey. He has been busy playing the New York club scene creating a solid and growing following in the process. Gallery contains many of the songs that will be familiar to that fan-base who will be delighted they have now been freshly put down onto CD for the first time.

It is that word ‘fresh’ that best sums up Dion Roy. His music has an air of breezy ease about it as though songs just flows from him at all hours of the day or night. Beginning as a bass player in a band, he realized his gift for writing and ventured out alone. The result is a confident and well crafted debut, brimming with consistently strong songs, and of course nicely constructed bass lines.

Inside, a little more of him is amusingly revealed by delving into his list of acknowledgments, in particular his thanks to the ‘annoying’ downstairs neighbour for ‘grabbing her broomstick and pounding on the floor at 9pm….while I was recording the bass on this album.’ Dion goes on to thank her ‘for her contribution’. As I say, I like this guy's honesty.

After such a positive opening with “Come Back Around” you would be forgiven for expecting a slight dip in proceedings. Far from it. “Wants It” continues very much where its predecessor left off with an equally impressive song that sets the standard that the rest of the album maintains. It’s another doomed relationship song and as Dion sings, ‘she says she wants it, just not from me’, the honest men among us sigh in the knowledge that we can all identify with that.

Article Author: Jeff Perkins

Jeff is a writer who lives in France. He writes CD/DVD box sets, music reviews and has had a book published about David Byron of Uriah Heep. He is 'busy' exploring the music of Europe with his wife Debbie and dog Dylan. It's Dylan that does the writing of course. …

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