Anthony Snape – Disappearing Day

I have MySpace to thank for my discovery of Anthony Snape. I can’t remember how I found his page – probably through a trail of Australian Singer-Songwriters pages – but I found him. And I’m so glad I did.

Twelve songs, plus the beautifully hidden Silvia make up the album. Signed to an independent label in Australia, I’m amazed he’s made it on to UK iTunes, but he has. And, alas, I have this wonderful album.

Opening with Daylight, an uplifting track with the metaphor, or possible literal meaning, of not wanting daylight to not to arise, Snape envelops you with the first of many catchy choruses. He also demonstrates his ability to hold a note, something he can do for an impressively long time.

“Every stumble helps you grow/learn the things you didn’t know”. Those lyrics speak true to many of the situation life throws at you; as such I felt a personal connection with Little Piece Of Love. Written in a way that it can create this personal sentiment to a wider audience, it implies that you are special. Whoever YOU maybe. However clichéd it might sound, it does succeed in portraying that message.

I was immediately taken by Walking. It’s only a short song – less than three minutes – but it captured me. The attitude taken in the lyrics is that of getting knocked down but getting up again, though in a far less irritating way than that awful chant-like song.

Lay Down Your Love was not a song I was desperately drawn to, perhaps to do with my belief that the chorus sounds a little more manufactured than some other album tracks.

I remember skiing down mountains with the lyrics to Call On Me flying around my head. It’s fast paced, just like my skiing. Although, I must credit it as being far less shaky than my skiing skills. I’m not too sure what the subject matter of the song is, and I like not knowing. It’s got a literal meaning, that’s for sure; if you’re looking for a quick fling Snape wants to hear from you. But I question if there’s not something a little more deep hidden behind it. Then again, listening to it now, he does sound pretty keen on finding some quick love. So maybe that’s just what he was craving at the time.

Sounding a little more heartbroken, the title track Disappearing Day, sings of waiting for someone’s love. It sounds a little unrequited, so going by the previous wants of a one night stand, if the lyrics are in any way factual, Snape may not have been having the greatest time relationship-wise. The song itself sticks to the formula of a tuneful chorus that refuses to evacuate your head for several days.

Frequency also has a catchy chorus. And whilst Solitude isn’t quite so memorable, it’s still well formed with some repetition to try and drill it into you that the narrative is trying to get some time alone. One of the slower paced tracks, Come, has a floaty feel about it. As though you could almost hear the sea in the background.

Now to the song I know the most about. When I was given a school project to make a fictional compilation CD of songs that I liked or had some connection to, I took it a little more seriously than my peers and wrote to Snape himself to inquire to the subject. Though I doubted a response, I was proven wrong when he responded with a line by line explanation of the song. Bless him. It turns out the song’s inspiration was drawn from previous relationships where girlfriends had been picky about the small, idiosyncratic things, although he later concluded that this could just be because of the differences between gender and how interpretations of things can vary. But from this inspiration, Idiosyncrasy was born. And it was my favourite song for quite some time. That is, until I fell in love with Sunday.

There was a stage in my life where I found myself allergic to Sundays. Whilst this may sound illogical, and I’ll admit I was never given an official medical diagnosis, I believe that an allergy to a day of the week can exist. Sunday lies at the end of the weekend. The weekend is found before you return to the routines of weekdays. The routines of weekdays that included school. And I wasn’t desperately fond of school, for many reasons I shan’t divulge, but it just wasn’t something I enjoyed waking up to. Anyway, Sunday sung to me about the day in a completely different light. Whilst Snape sung of how quickly Sunday comes around as a day to relax, I interpreted it in my own way. It encouraged me to ‘break from the cycle’ that he’d written about, as I grow to learn that Monday wouldn’t cause me any pain. And to this day, I still love this song. It connects with me in a way that only a handful of songs do. So if you take anything from this review – download Sunday. Or atleast take a listen on YouTube. The version on the album Acoustic Sunday is the one of the most amazing versions of any song I’ve ever heard. Listen to it, ok?!

In a slightly less dramatic way, Stronger along with the hidden track Silvia end the album well with the narrative of the lyrics in both telling stories that feel un-manufactured. And for this I love the album. You get the sense that Snape writes about what he wants. He makes it personal. For both his enjoyment, and yours.

A recently uploaded YouTube video shows Snape singing yet another beautifully crafted track, Balloons, that I’m left hoping will appear on a future release. His combination of vocal ability and emotive lyrics wowed me, making Disappearing Day a highly played album on my iTunes.

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