Dannika – Gems

Gems is is an intimate and friendly album — an album made by friends with locked-in, cohesive performances that evince mutual understanding and respect. It also boasts a roster of songs that are open, agile, versatile, and unassuming. The observations are well-crafted and interesting, but are delivered in an understated manner and make no claim to be the universal truth. The result is that this is a set of music that brings the listener into the songwriter’s world and makes him or her oh so comfortable and welcome. The album doesn’t feel like a concert, it feels like a day spent at a cottage in the country with friends, only set to music.
From the above, it is obvious that whether I like an album often depends on how it makes me feel, but this feature is of less use to you if I don’t provide some more detail. Gems is a guitar pop album from Australian band Dannika, featuring jangling and ringing guitars, bright melodies, colorful and quirky lyrics that still manage to pack a punch, and songs ranging from fulsome uptempo to sparse and laid back. The band consists of award-winning filmmaker and songwriter/vocalist/bassist Dannika Horvat, Liam Parsons (guitar), Stefan Blair (guitar), and Paul Ceraso (drums). Parsons and Blair are also known as the duo Good Morning (which was featured on these pages in 2015).