Cincinnati rock group caters to audience with ‘clean cut’ album

"Come up and talk to us after the show!" Daniel Simmons, lead singer for All the Day Holiday, pronounced into the microphone between songs at Frankie's Inner City on Feb. 5.

"We'd like to talk to you guys and we'd love it if we could have a personal relationship with each one of you, which might not be possible," Simmons said. "But let's talk!"

The show was performed in a way to catch not only the ears, but the eyes of the Toledo audience. The stage was set in the unusual format with drummer Mark Ventura front and center with the two guitarists, Daniel Simmons and Nathan Frisch on either side. This allowed the audience members to more intimately watch and appreciate the aptitude and force of the drummer, but didn't draw away from the other members of the band.

Most interesting was the lead singer, Simmons, overtly being on an even keel with his band mates; tucked into stage left like a commoner. This set gave an impression of a group of musicians sharing the stage and orchestrating together as opposed to showcasing mainly their respective, individual talents and showing each other up.

This communal perspective carried over into the texture of sound, which resonated from the live performance. The musical synergy was evenly distributed, achieving a full and complete sound, which was exciting to watch and experience. The musical skill and professional equipment components were well used with an energizing stage presence. All of this was accomplished without the excessive indulgence of ego, which sometimes can practically be seen dripping from the microphone stands.

It was refreshing to see a band that wasn't a one-man show for the lead vocalist or lead guitarist. The persona of the group both on and off stage was based in a group attitude and was both laid back and passionate at the same time.

"The Things We've Grown to Love" is the first full length album from the Cincinnati based indie-ambient rock group, All the Day Holiday. The band is currently on tour promoting the collection of tracks released in 2009.

"The Things We've Grown to Love" is an album that unfolds with this same delicate yet powerful balance as the band's live performance and stage presence. The clean aerial songs audibly soar with the talent of the musicians and caressingly arouse the pleasant accomplishment of a well produced piece. It is clean, maybe even too clean for ambient rock.

All the Day Holiday is not a band for fans of organic-sounding music in the styles of low-fi and simply recorded scratch tracks. The sound of the album resonates perfectly timed music executed within a nearly sterile paradigm. Not to degrade the worth of the work–it is merely a matter of preference. Pristine and light in tone, the complexities and resounding layers of the score generate energy of heavenly allusion within the sound.

The lyrics, too, are uplifting and sweet. They can occasionally border on cliché or easy, through simple phrasing of commonly used metaphors and words like, "A thousand spider webs" or "I love you so. Do you really know? I could never pretend. You've always been so much more than a friend."

In spite of these occasional pitfalls, there is a definite effort on the part of the lyricists to stimulate imagination, thought and inspiration rather than simply fill space with meaningless words or negative energy. The messages contained within each line are not entirely overt, but hint at some higher meaning and some motivating sense of purpose, such as, "Meaning is rooted in the trees. Oh it's pulsing through branches, dispersing through the leaves," and "the love that I feel inside of me is all I need, its right."

The title track, especially, constructs a very pleasant world of moving pictures within the mind's eye and poignantly utters the message behind the album, and one might even venture to guess, the band, as it states with a sense of conviction,

"I want to show the world that we are more than a system. We have a reason for being here."

This reason is never directly stated, which causes the listener to inspect and open up to the possibilities of the subtext. To wonder, speculate and pay attention.