Some Days Are Darker - TV-MA

TV-MA, the forthcoming release from New York-via-Phoenix pop-flecked post-rock consortium Some Days Are Darker, stands as an enthralling, eminently engaging declaration of intent. A conceptual art piece in five sonic chapters, the record melds shimmering guitar, ethereal synths, and propulsive rhythm into work that is at once timeless and very much of the moment. Strip away the noir darkwave atmospherics and one finds deeply catching melodies lifting frontman / songwriter Lear Mason’s yearning, melancholic baritone. TV-MA is a concept album that unfolds like an anthology, and at its core is a deeply human meditation on love, loss, and rebirth.

Mason came to music at an early age, and by his late teens was releasing records and touring the U.S. with an Ontario-based hardcore band, serving as guitarist and primary songwriter. Following that groups implosion, he took matters into his own hands. Settling in Phoenix, he formed metal group Evolution of the Kill.

Over the next few years fortune frowned upon them; their practice space burned down, and their rhythm guitarist feel victim to an overdose. A period of personal transformation followed, and although Mason will always hold a deep love for heavy music, it was time for a change. “When I was writing heavy music, the range of emotion I was expressing was fairly narrow” explains Mason. “Part of the reason I shifted away was to expand that palette. To use more colors from the wheel. To blur the lines of genre in a way that allows for more nuance.”

Through originally intended to be a solo endeavor, Some Days Are Darker has evolved organically over the last two years into a live, three-piece band. “The more shows we played, the more the sound evolved” says Mason. Indeed, the songs on TV-MA were shaped into their final forms in the crucible of live performance.

Once ready, the band decamped to drummer Robbie Williamson’s Orange Blossom Studio in Pheonix to track. Truly a DIY project, the record was performed, produced, engineered, and mixed by Mason, Williamson, and bassist Chris Martin. On the recording, the trio share keyboard, electronics, programming, and percussion duties.

Warm and shimmering on the surface, cold and dark at its depths, TV-MA is a narrative journey through obsession, failure and loss, and existential rumination. “Can anyone ever save us from ourselves?” asks Mason “Sometimes you feel like no one in the world could ever understand you. Our own personal experiences are so unique. We are cursed with only ever getting to see things through our own eyes. But once in a while, art speaks to you in a way that no one else can. It says, “I feel what you feel. You’re not alone. That moment, and the hope that I can provide that for someone, is why I will never stop creating.”