For dvsn, the duo of singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85 signed to Drake’s OVO label, dark clouds started to form near the end of their excellent debut on a song called “Hallucinations.” On an album steeped in the glow of new love, the track found Daley wrestling with intense heartbreak: “Tryna rewind till we’re back where we started … seeing you when you aren’t there.” Then there was “Another One,” which spoke more directly: “Never did I think I’d lose your love,” Daley concedes. “The hell was I thinking of?”
Morning After is a heartbreak record that extends that narrative, yet the album feels murkier than its predecessor and colder to the ear. It depicts a period of ambiguity, that on-again/off-again cycle of hooking up and breaking up, where it’s better to move on but the passion is too intense. Daley examines the ups and downs of a failed romance, lamenting his own faults and shortcomings along the way, while looking for some sort of resolution—not just with the woman, but with himself. It’s unclear if he ever finds it.
Daley is blessed with one of those rich tenor and falsetto voices that is built to convey pain and torment. It’s sturdy enough to channel classic R&B vibes of, say, Lenny Williams, but has the right production touches on it to feel right at home in the present. On “Nuh Time / Tek Time” in particular, he boils over in a rare bout of frustration. “You make it hard to trust you,” he quips. “Right now you talking crazy/First marriage, then babies?/Then text me, you hate me?!” The coiled drama of his voice and the production creates a love story for the Instagram age, a gut-wrenching tale in the era of swipe left and double-tap validation. Somehow, he captures the essence of R&B pillars like Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (the singer’s 1999 cut “Fortunate” is sampled for “P.O.V.”) and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, splitting the difference between them without leaning too heavily on either one.
While the dvsn brand is mostly associated with the silver-throated Daley, Nineteen85 is equally vital to the group’s overall effect. He mixes pop, modern bounce, and hip-hop, to create sparse beats that could work just as well beneath their label boss’ jilted bleeding heart rhymes. Yet on Morning After, the music feels shadowy and cinematic, unfolding in a fog of downtempo electro-soul. As it plays, you can almost see Daley’s story unfold like a melodrama. “We know music opens the door to the unknown,” they said. “Your mind automatically starts to fill in the blanks and create what you would want to see while listening to our music.”
To that end, Morning After challenges listeners to assemble their own puzzle, pull fragments from it, and draw their own conclusions. Trust, aloneness, insecurity, hundreds of nights worth of feelings: dvsn puts them all in the air for you to grab at any moment. There’s an air of mystery surrounding the group, which can make it tough to get a bead on exactly what they’re aiming for. Yet in an era where one’s personality takes precedence over the music they create, there’s something refreshing about art being presented without frills. For dvsn, this only adds to the intrigue, drawing you into the music even if the intended recipient is unclear. Though the overall story behind Morning After is vastly relatable, it feels a bit too cryptic in certain spots, and songs like “Don’t Choose” and “You Do” meander without adding much to the arc. But even the down moments add to the album’s meditative vibe—the isolation is palpable and the despair is too real. In dvsn’s world, old flames burn slow.
