No Man's Valley
Outside the Dream

We are moving outside the dream along with Dutch quintet No Man’s Valley and their second album. They released their debut album in 2016 following a pair of EPs and now they come up with an album that has a really good-looking artwork. The cover would be enough to think about buying this album on vinyl, but as I cannot afford buying album just because they look good it also have to be great to justify the cost. The most important thing is what is hiding inside that fancy cover, so lets have a look at what you will hear when checking out this one.

Psychedelic rock music is how the press material describes it, with a slash and some blues there as well. And bluesy psychedelic rock isn’t a bad description of what we are getting. We get a strong production with good depth and good variation over eight tracks that takes us from Outside the Dream to a murder ballad. I really like the sound, it is so confident and strong – such a solid production. The vocalist is pretty good as well but he is probably the weakest link on this album.

It is a good album; I like it and thinks it should appeal to a fairly wide audience. You have to be looking rather closely to find any weaknesses, the songs are good and they sound fairly fresh but they also have a sense of familiarity to them. The thing missing is probably a strong hit song, something that makes you want to return to the album over and over again. Having such a song would have taken this album from being a good one to being a great one. But even so, it is an album worth checking out as it has some fine songs and good music.

The cover sort of reflects what we get to hear but the music isn’t as good as the cover art. But I think the conclusion will have to be that this Dutch band has put together a fine album that can be well worth checking out.

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