Music Review: A Day Without Love

A Day Without Love
WTF Parts 1 and 2

by Roy Peak 

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A Day Without Love is the diverse musical project of Brian Walker, a Philadelphia musician who fearlessly crosses genre boundaries with his music. Walker has played numerous shows in nearly half the states across America, and sees his calling in music as a way to inspire hope and support to others in need.

His newest musical project was born out of the frustration he sees in a divided and inherently racist America, fiscal inequality, and voter rights. Titled WTF, and divided into two parts, Walker's vision is timely, and dares to not hold back its punches one bit.

WTF1, released October 22, 2020, is a hip-hop project dealing with racism during 2020 and the years before, as well as Walker's own feelings as a black artist in America. A demand for societal change is rampant on all these songs, as is the first person perspective that Walker fills all of his songs with, imbibing them with a street-eye view of the months leading up to another divisive election in a nation already at odds with itself. 

WTF2, released October 29, 2020, is a more folk punk effort and indeed a musical project made for our chaotic times. Walker has purposely composed short songs of approximately a minute in length to better reach a generation used to TikTok and Twitter, and which brings to mind the short bursts of frantic punk rock from such bands as Minutemen and Mission of Burma. Walker is less political and more cultural in this musical essence, which gives his songs an emotional immediacy and sense of foreboding. 

Genre-fluid artists are fast becoming a thing nowadays. I'm thinking it's because the previous generations have used up so much of the genre bandwidth—we've gone from folk to rockabilly to psychedelic to heavy metal to punk to grunge with shifting layers of pop, emo, dance, trance, ambient, rap, hip-hop, and everything in between—that what have we left for the next generations of artists but for them to hold up their own mirrors to the previous generations of music makers and do their abled best. Genre mash-ups, which at one time were mostly left to novelty songs or kitsch artists, are now considered the norm, and quite often respected. (Doesn't mean they're always better than the original forerunners, but often they are culturally timely, and therefore needed.) 

A Day Without Love's latest effort is timely, relevant, well worth listening to—and especially—paying attention to.

You can check out some music videos for WTF here:
Mission Music Video by Jennifer Strogatz 
WTF Part 2 Music Video by Alex Stanilla (Release Date 10/29)
America Needs to do Better Lyric Video by Nick Papa (Release 10/29)

​Bio:
Roy Peak has played electric bass in more bands than he cares to remember for more years than he can remember. He wrote the theme song for the Utica, New York radio show "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn" on WPNR-FM. His solo debut album, All Is Well, has been called "Loud, cacophonous, and beautiful by a truly unique artist." His short fiction has been published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and he writes music reviews for the King Tut Vintage Album Museum of Jacksonville.

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