Connecticut has been quite the hotbed of undiscovered rock music talent lately. Some prog-rock and alt rock bands have started to gain some real traction. Unfortunately the more well-known musicians from CT have included Michael Bolton, 50 Cent and John Mayer. Hopefully the Constitution State will keep turning out great rock bands like The Dalliance, which I discovered today.
The Danbury based band finally got together after playing in different musical projects throughout the Connecticut scene for years. It was an almost innocent formation of just some guys with no preconceived aspirations or timetables looking to put something different out there and agreeing to be each other’s harshest critics. Sometimes the best music comes out when it is allowed to be organic and not forced to be something that it is not.
Last Month The Dalliance released Birth Love Death, a 12 song album recorded, produced, and engineered by the band members themselves in their own little recording/rehearsal studio DisgraceLand. The project was totally self-funded as well giving the band the freedom to put out a record on their own terms with no label pressure to cater to. There are a few rock radio friendly hits here such as ‘What Does Electricity Taste Like’, a fuzzy guitar filled powerfest of vocal performances with a driving rhythm section. Another potential hit is the creepy ‘Pain Has Gills’. Singer Barry Mangione uses a vocal phrasing much like Rivers Cuomo of Weezer (also from CT) on this fun to listen to track. The keyboard fills of Shawn Finney are also a nice touch. The album jumps around a little exposing many different influences and styles which will probably lead to a large and diverse following. The production could be better but is not bad for a band doing it by themselves in a basement studio. The songwriting is there though and the band could break out if they get future albums professionally engineered.
We recommend beating the masses to the bandwagon and checking out The Dalliance ASAP at:
The album is also free to stream there. Enjoy!