With a heavy-handed thrust to lead the way, Dan Ashley’s new single “We Stayed Home” comes stomping out of the silence ready to turn any mundane moment into a memorable highlight of the day. While it’s beat is saturated in a poppy swing that doesn’t necessarily match up with the rustic feel of the strings at first, it doesn’t take long for the two to form a groove that anyone who likes to move their body to music can fall head over heels for. Dan Ashley is still trying to find his footing with mainstream critics and fans this fall, but as he has with the last three songs he’s released, he brings an authenticity to this single that really suggests he’s ready to take his sound to the next level.
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The vocal is the showcase here, but this isn’t to say the instrumentation is leaving something to be desired. The electric guitar has a surprising sear to its melody that conflicts with the evenness of the acoustic guitar’s harmony, but as they go to war with each other for the lion’s share of our affections, Ashley takes a moment to rule over the ensuing chaos like a king over a sonic kingdom. His swagger is off the charts in this performance, and after hearing a little bit of hesitance in “Lucky Stars,” I think it’s a great way of bouncing back and showing the audience just how versatile a melodic craftsman he can be in the right circumstances.
There’s nothing I would change about the cosmetics nor the construction of “We Stayed Home,” and that isn’t something I’ve been able to say about any of the mainstream pop/rock material I’ve listened to in the year 2020. It’s obvious he isn’t trying to sell out his natural sound for something a drenched in radio-ready varnish and a commercial bend that makes one song indistinguishable from another on the FM dial, and even if he is looking to grow his fan base, he isn’t going about it in such a way that would make me question his integrity as a performer and a player in an increasingly scrutinized age for singer/songwriters. He’s the real article, and that’s evident even at a six-foot distance here.
“We Stayed Home” is one-part quarantine ballad and another part self-exposing statement on the part of one Dan Ashley, who has yet to conceal anything in the narratives he shares with fans but goes out of his way to be vulnerable in this most recent studio recording. Ashley isn’t the first musician of his genre to come forth with something really honest and charged in the last year against the backdrop of an uncertain time for the United States and our world in general, but for my money, his is one of the only performances that has felt untethered to some sort of growing movement among indie musicians at home and abroad this season. He didn’t have to say what he did in this single, but thankfully his heart wouldn’t allow for anything to stifle a songcraft like his.
Christophe Shin
