David Gates’s debut album is a collection of personal songs that are -without exception- full of the most passionate rock songwriting. One driving groove and impassioned instrumental after another, Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace is a rewarding and empowering listen.
Based in Lincoln, England, David Gates is a singer and songwriter whose music is visceral and impactful. Alternative rock in its core, with heavy usage of strings, synths, and non-rock-typical guitar tones, the music on Gates’s album is deliciously different, and with his personal approach to his lyrics, David Gates’s music is very engaging. Gates’s songwriting tends to fall on the heavier side of things, with caveman beats and hairy guitar riffs being the norm over the lifetime of the album, and with moments of serene respite, such as the outro to ‘Memory’, being hard-earned exceptions.
The album also features a stark blend between organic and synthetic, with a song like ‘Preparing for Emergencies’ sticking out with its hard quantization, rich saturation with synths and sub-bass, and robotic vocal processing, and alongside its melancholic musical tendencies, it is one of the songs on the album that clearly make a statement about the claustrophobia AI is generally creating with its close interference in our lives. Offering a contrast, the album’s to this point have been brash and heavy-handed cuts of rock. The album’s titular starter and sophomore ‘For the Love Of’ are a great introduction into Gates’s off-kilter riffing and his great knack for hooks, with ‘For the Love Of’ being a gargantuan, 6-minute long monster that features majestic strings and a dynamic arrangement.
‘Memory’ is the album’s first half’s most outstanding cut. Featuring a balanced arrangement that does not go all ham on the beats and guitars, and not all robotic as the following cut ‘Preparing for Emergencies’, the song is a delicately nuanced jam full of vocal harmonies and interesting mixing choices. An ensemble of guitars starts a minute of hammering around the song’s midpoint that gets a little challenging as it progresses, introducing more and more indulgent drumming, before the whole song breaks down into a serene, lush pad-led clearing that was quite moving. For contrast, ‘Rebranded’ is a song that fuses the human and machine elements into one. With a peaceful chord structure and harmless melodies, the song offers a moment of sonic relief that is helped along by the clockwork fashion of the hypnotic pace of bass and beat, both electronic, minimal, and tight on the grid.
From that point forth, the album settles into a style that uniformly fuses the electronic with the human, ‘Futurist’ reintroduces the album’s rock-centered mentality with a brooding riff and a deep-pocketed groove, while the gorgeous ‘Acceptable Limits of Being Sick’ heralds a deeply personal message for Gates, while being an incredibly engaging and forgiving song. ‘Acceptable Limits of Being Sick’ is the second half’s most outstanding cut, and -for me- the album’s most approachable and beautiful song.
The album’s penultimate ‘For Catherine O’er the Sea’ features the album’s only acoustic guitar-led arrangement. A pensive and beautiful composition that’s incredibly dynamic with its momentous rhythm and stirring usage of a few wailing strings near the end, it is a song that highlights David Gates’s skills as an arranger. ‘I’ll See You There’ is an outstanding closer that’s dripping with bittersweet melancholy, embedded into its chord structure, sullen, temperate tempo, touching words, and impactful, restrained delivery. It is also the song that displays the starkest display of restraint on the album, and for a runtime of nearly 6-minutes, it is a properly hypnotizing song.
David Gates, being an autistic artist, is offering us an invaluable glance into his experiences in life through the varied songs on this album. Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace is an album not made for profit (can be downloaded for free on Bandcamp), that is curated to be a message from Gates to his listeners. A triumphant display of indie musicianship, a long album full of deeply interesting sounds that all have Gates’s unique sonic twist to them, ‘Watched over…’ is a terrific listen.
