Deaf Havana - All These Countless Nights album review

Confessional anthems from King’s Lynn arena rockers

Cover art for Deaf Havana - All These Countless Nights album

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For most, two consecutive Top 10 albums is fine and dandy. But not for James Veck-Gilodi. Deaf Havana’s fourth record details the singer’s struggles with booze, success and self-doubt on an arena-sized scale.

Where its three predecessors charted a journey from screaming post-hardcore angst to Springsteen-indebted heartland rock, All These Countless Nights goes straight for the commercial jugular. Ashes To Ashes and Sing are perfectly crafted anthems designed to connect with audiences from Hollywood to Hunstanton. Ironically, it’s Veck-Gilodi himself who lets the side down.

The otherwise terrific Fever and Happiness (‘My drinking takes its toll on everybody around me’) plaster on the poor-me self-loathing with all the depth and finesse of a teenage diary, which is fine if you’re actually a teenager, but not when you’re hurtling through your late 20s. A little bit of growing up wouldn’t go amiss.

Dave Everley

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.