Shivering Post-Punk Melodies and Sonorous Vocals in Dover Lights “Memory Dissolves”

“No silhouette of your figure to cancel my fear.”

Ozark Mountains based duo, Dover Lights have unveiled their video for Memory Dissolves is the second single from their upcoming self-titled debut album Dover Lights.

The song. from the creative minds of lyricist/composer, Daniel Brinker, and producer/arranger, Andy Moore, is a Post-punk study of memory, dreams, and the transient nature of life and love in the post-atomic age. In it, Brinker hunts for unattainable youth through anthemic lyrics (with an intimate vocal croon in the realm of David Bowie and Peter Murphy) while the drums tick away like an accelerated clock (with a Fairlight drum machine collapsing over the primary beat). The driving metallic bass propels the elusive subject matter forward, ringing out like early post-punk acts, Wire and Joy Division, as Moore’s cavernous grinding guitars echo back to The Cure and the raw early years of U2.

On the song and video, Brinker explains:

“It might be a radio hit in an alternate universe or on a world with a dying sun. The lyrics cover a group of liminal and intangible ideas: the way lovers define each other based on memory, the letting go of the desire to possess another person, and the exploration of feelings that are the last remnant of faded memories from teenage years. The chorus came to me as I witnessed a young couple embracing with the view of our local nuclear power plant, directly behind them, as the steam-cloud drifted up from its cooling tower. It’s the only song on our debut album that I would say consists mainly of primary colors; however, the breakdown goes down a gothic tunnel of roaring synthesizers and dense counterpoint warfare on the guitars. The lyrics paint images of togetherness and romantic resolve in spite of a world constantly degrading through entropy — encapsulated in the line ‘glass sands of black’ in the second verse (which refers to trinitite glass created from desert sand transformed by a nuclear explosion).

The video delves heavily into nostalgia. It was shot on a VHS camcorder by my brother when we were teenagers in 2001. The film had degraded over the years as I only recently had it digitized this past summer. The repurposed footage was originally a short documentary of our home town. We were just teenagers having fun at the time, and I decided to keep the playful shots of us and our friends in the music video.”

Watch the video below:

Memory Dissolves is a spellbindingly poetic journey inward augmented by passionate vocals resonating over shivering guitar delays, sounding like if Peter Murphy were to front U2 over the icy soundscapes of the Irish Band’s third studio album War. The single comes from Dover Lights’ self-titled debut album, Dover Lights, which is out on January 15th, 2021.

Pre-order the album on vinyl, CD, or digital via www.doverlights.com and on the band’s Bandcamp page.