Thomas Charlie Pedersen of Vinyl Floor releases solo LP

Surreal, at times postmodern, consistently visually provocative but not quite enigmatic in the way that so many of its stylistic counterparts on the mainstream side would be, the music video for Thomas Charlie Pedersen’s “Must Be The World,” lead single from his second solo record Daylight Saving Hours, is quite the captivating watch to say the least. Much like the album that spawned its arrival, this video demonstrates just how much organic melodicism outweighs monolithic hooks and plasticized poeticisms in Thomas Charlie Pedersen’s work, and while it’s hardly the only gem to behold in the treasure chest of tonality and texture that is Daylight Saving Hours, it may well be the most accessible and radio-ready of the fourteen songs included in the tracklist.

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Pedersen’s vocal is at the center of most every song here (save for the instrumental title track and seventy-two second opus “The Witty Moniker,” both of which threw chills down my back as much as any of the lyric-driven compositions on the LP did), and in tracks like “Faithful Mistress,” “The World is Not Your Oyster” and “The Meriwether Pull,” it tells us even more through a mere tone about the context of the verses than the music does. There’s a lot of passion in every word that comes spilling from his lips in this album, and although some examples tend to shine brighter than others – “To a First Love,” “Must Be The World” – there isn’t a single song on Daylight Saving Hours that I would consider filler from a critical perspective.

The stripped-down master mix that Pedersen decided to go with in this LP definitely accentuates the raw textures we discover in “At the End of the Day,” “The Freewheeler,” “Blood Moon” and “Green Plateau” (just to name a few) beautifully, and while some of his closest rivals on the American side of the Atlantic might have gone with something a bit more indulgent in this instance – if for no other reason than to emphasize understated elements of complexity and surrealism in the music – he was smart to stick with a barebones filtration with every song here. There’s a lot for us to dig into in Daylight Saving Hours without having to pick apart clutter in the grander scheme of things, and by avoiding the pitfalls of excess, this artist wound up delivering one of the most poignant albums of its kind to see release in 2020.

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I hadn’t heard his work before just recently, but I’ve fallen in love with Thomas Charlie Pedersen’s unassumingly brooding approach to songcraft after sitting down with Daylight Saving Hours this past week. Devoid of the needless pandering and self-absorbed commentaries that frequently beset alternative folk records with as ambitious a design as this one is sporting, Pedersen’s second LP doesn’t ask anything from its audience in exchange for a wealth of creative energy and a familiar, unsophisticated emotion in the most exposed state we’ve seen it in to date. This player has come a long way in the last few years, and his progress is evidenced in this melodic masterpiece of an album.

Samuel Pratt