Memory Dissolves is the second single from the Ozark Mountains based duo, Dover Lights, consisting of lyricist/composer, Daniel Brinker, and producer/arranger, Andy Moore. Released ahead of their debut album which drops January 15th of next year, Memory Dissolves isn’t just a single, it isn’t just a teaser, it’s a full blown experience executed perfectly in a Post-Punk palate with nostalgic splashes of early Bowie, The Cure, and early U2.
The single is heavily rooted in nostalgia, not just musically, but visually and lyrically. The duo explore the “memory, dreams, and the transient nature of life and love in the post-atomic age” and they do so in a striking and (for me) gut wrenching way. The music video is entirely composed of digitized VHS footage of Brinker’s hometown in 2001, complete with mundane, every day, and deeply familiar home movie scenes of the diner we all frequented when we were younger, the gas station we stopped at that one time on a cross county trip in the middle of the night, the small town roads and porches of our youth.
“It was shot on a VHS camcorder by my brother when we were teenagers in 2001. The film had degraded over the years as I only recently had it digitized this past summer. The repurposed footage was originally a short documentary of our home town. We were just teenagers having fun at the time, and I decided to keep the playful shots of us and our friends in the music video.” And scenes of the possibly foreign nuclear smoke stacks, made familiar by virtue of having been painted in the same nostalgic shared memory. Brinker’s memories become our memories.
Lyrically, the chorus, inspired by “a young couple embracing with the view of our local nuclear power plant, directly behind them, as the steam-cloud drifted up from its cooling tower”, evokes those remembered moments of youth, but makes them uneasy and transient with the verse lyrics and their reference of “glass sands of black” and repeated references of drowning, fading, and failing.
Quite frankly, Memory Dissolves is a beautifully captured and ineffable emotion. Check out and follow Dover Lights to stay in the loop for when they drop their debut in January! And you know what else is cool?All proceeds from the album and singles sales go to the fight against human trafficking. Proceeds go to New Hope Youth.
Website: doverlights.com
Bandcamp: doverlights.bandcamp.com
Facebook: facebook.com/doverlights