CD REVIEW: David Cook - This Loud Morning (Sony)

The seventh American Idol winner David Cook had been dealt some serious blows before he released his new CD, This Loud Morning. The hardest of these blows was the death of his older brother Adam in May 2009, who had been fighting brain cancer. It was this that pushed him to write his most personal album yet. A day after his Declaration Tour ended in December 2009, he started penning the lyrics and music for this masterpiece.

“I got off the road and all the things that happened that I hadn’t been dealing with while I was on the road reared their head,” the singer says. “So as I began writing these songs that would eventually make up This Loud Morning, the act of using these songs as therapeutic outlets became a major release for me, and I think the end result is a bit of up, a bit of down, and a lot of honesty. The result is a batch of deeply honest, emotional songs that allow whomever’s listening to look through a window at the past couple of years of my life. It’s probably the most therapeutic album I’ve ever written,” explains David. Prior to The Loud Morning, he released his self titled CD David Cook in 2008 after he was crowned Idols winner, but there's also a pre-Idols CD, Analog Heart.

Although people might think, looking at the title of the new CD, that they will find some hard rocking "loud" tunes, it's everything but loud. The CD consists of mood music for the morning. It's good on the ear as it includes balanced amounts of strings, piano, and crunchy guitar. He says that as he was writing the material for the CD, a theme began to emerge. “There were mornings where I woke up and all I wanted to do was pull the blanket back over my head and try again tomorrow.” That feeling inspired the album’s opening track, Circadian, as well as its closing track, Rapid Eye Movement, which includes a line from which the album’s title is taken: “Give me one more quiet night before this loud morning gets it right and does me in.” “I think everyone’s been at that point where they just feel, ‘Man, the world is loud,’ David says. “The only reprieve you get is when you’re asleep. I wanted to blend that feeling with the romantic idea that you can live your entire life during the hours you’re asleep — that there’s this pause button you can use to make sense of the world around you.”

The Loud Morning deals with some heavy themes, but it doesn't mean the CD is a downer. “It’s actually more musically up-tempo than any of my previous albums,” David says. “I felt like we created a decent base with the last record (2008's David Cook) about where my heart was at musically. I've always enjoyed big sweeping choruses, stuff that kind of kicks you in the chest and knocks the wind out of you a bit. So with this album, I wanted to take that ideal and expand upon it — make the bigs a bit bigger and the smalls a bit smaller. I wanted it to be more intimate, but also more grandiose, and really stretch the boundaries of those two ideals.” David credits his producer Matt Serletic (Aerosmith, Rob Thomas, and Willie Nelson) for the success of his new CD.  “Matt pulled things out of me that I certainly wouldn’t have gone for on my own,” Cook says. “He is all about the right sounds at the right time for the right reasons, and I think what I learned from him is that it’s not always an easy road to get the right thing. His ability to expand upon the ideas that I brought to the table really made this record what it is.” 

David concludes that he can feel that as an artist he has grown with the recording of The Loud Morning. “I feel that we were able to find the perfect landscape for these songs. Each one is its own living, breathing thing. I've always approached making records the same way I've approached putting a band together: I'm not concerned with the best songs or the best musicians. I'm concerned with the right songs and the right musicians. My focus is to make great records and having something real and truthful to write about really helped. I feel like the growth in this record is musical, it’s lyrical, it's emotional, and that what I've hit on is something that a lot of people can relate to.”