- Record Label: Secretly Canadian
- Release Date: Aug 5, 2008
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Q MagazineWaiting for the Sunrise is a blissful alt-country album where the Hammond organ swells and pulses like it's being tickled by Al Kooper. [Oct 2008, p.152]
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Perhaps in the winter this will all seem a lot less charming, but right now, it’s a nice soundtrack for a drive out to the coast or for porch sitting late in the evening.
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'Someone Like You' is the stand-out track on a fairly solid album, but how much better would they have sounded with a little judicious editing and a sharper focus.
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Vandervelde possesses a strong voice and a definite place as a singer-songwriter, even if that place isn’t too far above the rest just yet.
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By rights, this should feel cloyingly sentimental, but Vandervelde’s musical virtuosity means it’s beguilingly exotic, particularly album opener 'I Will Be Fine'--an insomniac’s echoey hymn to the pre-dawn hours.
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Waiting for the Sunrise is never boring. At worst it dips into ‘pleasant’ territory, and if that guitar jam comes precisely when you’re expecting it, let’s call it “classic” rather than “formulaic” songwriting.
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Waiting for the Sunrise doesn’t signal the end of Vandervelde’s party, but one hopes he gets his second wind rather than becoming satisfied and heading off to bed.
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UncutVandervelde's second album only really hits its stride in the six-minute centerpiece 'Someone Like You.' [Oct 2008, p.114]
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FilterVandervelde masterfully dresses singer-songwriter tunes that could exist just on acoustic guitar in beautiful studio psychedelics, but too often he lets his brillant sound palette subsitute for structural creativity. [Summer 2008, p.98]
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Sliding away from his Marc Bolan fixation, Vandervelde sounds more like a subpar Lindsey Buckingham (there's even a cocaine lyric on 'Someone Like You'), offering shlocky '70s AM pop rock on drifting, overlong tunes like 'Need for Now.'
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If Vandervelde's new set struggles to generate the same charge, maybe that's because it doesn't approach its source material with the same aggression or playfulness.
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Under The RadarDavid Vandervelde's latest full-length, Waiting For The Sunrise, is a a warm, comfortable, '70s AM radio throwback, layered with organs, reverb, and smoky heartbreak. [Fall 2008, p.84]
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It's not the worst thing imaginable to make a nice, pleasant record that wouldn't trouble anyone; it's just that Vandervelde (seemingly) promised more than just a peaceful easy feelin', and Waiting for the Sunrise is an almost complete disappointment in that regard.