It's a New Day Tonight

Canadian rocker Michael Rault isn't one to be shy about his influences. After 2015's Living Daylight, where he channeled his inner T. Rex and strutted his way through a winning set of boogie, ballads, and bouncing pop tunes, he takes a different tack on 2018's It's a New Day Tonight. This time around, he takes aim at the Beatles and their solo incarnations, with Harrison-esque slide guitars, chugging midtempos, towering vocal harmonies, and melodic basslines coming together for a sound not too far from Badfinger, but with a classic approach that came about after Rault hooked up with the Daptone Records crew and recorded at their studio. Producer Wayne Gordon and Rault keep things simple with a tight rhythm section and perfectly crafted, no-sound-wasted arrangements helping Rault's sweet melodies lodge deep in the brain. The songs revolve around sleep and dreams, with some of them romantic and some just peaceful. Either way, the sweeping string sections the duo employ and the lush vocal harmonies transmit the feelings of being barely awake and feeling good about it. Within this seemingly narrow avenue of operation, Rault is able to stretch out more than far enough to keep the ballad-heavy album from drifting away on a cloud of yawns. Tracks like "Sleep with Me" and "Dream Song" amble along gracefully, "New Day Tonight" and "Out of the Light" have some of the loose-limbed chug of Living Daylight, and songs like "Oh, Clever Boy" strike a lovely balance between paisley pop sweetness and early-'70s rootsiness. The album ends with "When the Sun Shines," a lengthy singalong jam that gently prods listeners awake and sends them blinking into the sunlight with the song's chorus happily ringing in their ears. It's a fine way to end a really good album; one that shows Rault reshaping his sound and sounding even better than before. ~ Tim Sendra