Dave Dobbyn: Loyal

	Song List
1.	Love You Like I Should
2.	Ain't No Doubt
3.	Defying Gravity
4.	Hell Takes No Holiday
5.	Stay
6.	Loyal
7.	Slice of Heaven
8.	I Wanna Know You
9.	Little Zeroes
10.	2 Fast Cars
11.	Liberty Bound
12.	Joy

WHAT is this thing called love? Dave Dobbyn, the eternal romantic but incurable melancholic, asks the perennial question on his album Loyal, which contains songs for swinging lovers plus much more besides. He confronts love, loyalty and the power of personal politics in Loyal, a rather low-key album. Loyal has its moments of rock and roll, but it's an album for romantics, personal and affecting. Hidden among the seductive melodies on Loyal are themes from the personal issues of relationships and responsibility to politics of a wider dimension. 'Love You Like I Should' covers this ground; written in 1985, it's always seemed to reflect the frustrations of that period: the year of the scapegoat "And the powers that would be / Can't change the freedom in me." Or the slinky 'Ain't No Doubt, ' with its "deep mistrust of any politician / Turn off their tissues of lies ... mistrust any man in power / Ain't that the nature of the beast?"

Dobbyn reveals "The lyric from 'Love You Like I Should' is directly related to another song, 'I Wanna Know You,' which is about television and how it numbs you." With its captivating lilt, 'I Wanna Know You' would make the perfect followup single neatly juxtaposing the personal and political. "It was originally called 'Powerless', but that seemed to be a cliche. Looking at the TV set, watching the riots in Seoul and Soweto, people getting stiffed all over the place,and the whole world is numbed to it. Here I am in my lounge ignoring this devastating news. On the TV news people are denied the truth by those in control, the Murdochs, Maxwells, governments who own TV stations. And the more that happens, the more it develops peoples' complacency."

"Heaven and hell are here," he sings on 'Hell Takes No Holiday.' "One man's liberty takes another's life." "While you feel free," says Dobbyn, "there's some other sucker out there chained, gagged and tortured for your liberty, on your complacency. The more I educate myself the more I think that knowledge and communication and emotion has to be spread. And music is a big part of that. You get a guy like Robbie Robertson coming back, or U2, giving a testimony of spirit. That's what it's all about - testimony of community, but still to be individuals."

[excerpt adapted from Chris Bourke's Loyal-era Dobbyn interview .]

Loyal

Dave Dobbyn

CBS (1988)

CD: 460655