Last year, Contact Music did a email interview with New York multi-instrumentalist Tomas Doncker and asked him about what inspired him to write “The Mess We Made”.
It was a cathartic reaction to the Charleston church massacre and all of the events leading up to it. Since that day, Man’s continuous inhumanity to his fellow man has not slowed down a bit. I find it hard to believe that in 2015, we treat each other with such disregard. Quite shameful, really. I couldn’t NOT say something.
This is true.
But then, we have the tale of two nations, one that’s angry about it and another who’s angry about the fact we’re that angry about it.
In the opening track Some Ol Dolls, Tomas Doncker has the Union Jack flying high in the U.S.A., which is upsetting enough of a visual to throw American nationalists into a rage.
Then we come to Church Burning Down which could easily be an audio montage of footage, of stability breaking down all around us.
Of course, you can decide what that is and you’ll always find someone to aggressively agree with you.
Easily, that’s the track that’s likely based off of the events of Charleston. Wow. Unbelievable that it was that long ago and Doncker reminds us that those events shouldn’t be forgotten.
And just to put things in some context, let’s at least agree that the social and political changes, after post-recovery of the 2008 recession brings up the type of frustration we can all relate to, which helps us understand “The Mess We Made” before we end up going our separate ways.
Then we get to the drum and bass beat on Revolution which, in the context of a music genre, it hasn’t aged very well but, this is R&B and it suits the sentiment for a such a simple, matter of fact message.
When Tomas Doncker sings “I’m Calling Bull Shit…”, with chorus and all, it hits hard.
I think the oldest of us have had our U2 moments. I can’t think of anything they’ve done during the last several years that’s been catchy enough for it to be passed onto a new generation.
It’s also simple pop music and they were able to pull off the rhythm and blues thing while they were big during the eighties, and get away with it. If they did it now, they might as well pack it up. Maybe.
But then again it’s U2 so, how would that work? It wouldn’t and I don’t even know why I’m bringing them up other than because Tomas Doncker does a cover of their song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.
Unfortunately his version drags and doesn’t capture the passion and drive from the original, or even the original songs of his on the rest of this album.
I do want to however, make a similar comparison between Tomas and Bono where they are both humanitarians, or at least have a message of humanitarianism in their work.
As you can see from the video above, the violence against blacks in America is what he’s angry about it and as each clip passes, you might begin to get angry too.
The title track is one of my favorite songs next to Don’t Let Go which follows it. It has these gospel tones, his vocals help me slide into a groove while the next track is slower and a soulful song.
He closes us out with the catchy Time Will Tell which he pulls off with ease and is perhaps, one of his strongest songs on the entire album.
While there are social topics in this album, it’s not all that obvious in case it puts some people off. Really, “The Mess We Made” is eight tracks of lean, smart songwriting and well produced social statement, and another quality release in Tomas Doncker’s portfolio.
SoundCloud,
Facebook,
Last.fm,
@TomasDoncker,
Official Site,
Amazon,
YouTube
"'The Mess We Made' Is Tomas Doncker's Social Statement" by incendiaryAmerican is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://wp.me/p6VWlN-1zI
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