JUSTIN DAVIES AND THE TORTURED SOULS Share Affecting Single And Video 'Unforgettable Days'
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Perth singer-songwriter Justin Davies makes an instantly memorable debut for his new project The Tortured Souls with the release of his poignant new single Unforgettable Days, out today. The single lands alongside the announce of The Tortured Souls’ show opening for Ron Sexsmith’s Hangover Terrace Tour, set to play The Rosemount Hotel on April 26.
Soaring piano melodies blended with rousing percussion and string arrangements sees this new single as an affecting, emotional, and powerful debut. Produced, mixed, and mastered by award-winning, two-time GRAMMY nominated, producer/engineer Rob Grant (Tame Impala, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Josh Homme) and featuring backing from a stellar lineup of Perth-based musicians including drummer Malcolm Clark and bassist Jay Cortez (both formerly of Aussie alt-rock heroes The Sleepy Jackson) and members of the internationally acclaimed West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the track heralds Davies’ deeply emotional full-length debut album, arriving later this year.
“‘Unforgettable Days’ is about lost love, but maybe more importantly, the beauty and magic and foreverness that seems to surround you on certain days or at certain times in life,” says Justin Davies. “The wonderful feeling that envelopes and fills you and is ever-present, long after those days have passed. It is a song of longing and loss, but it makes me feel a sense of promise and hope and nostalgia, maybe not in the lyrics, but in the way it ‘lifts’ in the chorus. And I guess I’m feeling that although life can be sad, there are times when it is also uplifting and overwhelmingly beautiful. The song reflects on someone I loved a long time ago, a young love, and how overwhelmingly wonderful our days were together. The reflections within ‘Unforgettable Days’ are also connected to words in the song ‘Promises.’ I remember the day when the light ‘was soft’ in the afternoon and laying on the grass in the middle of a farm paddock. I remember, too many times, kissing away tears when she felt she had been unloving toward me and was sorry. In the early years we would lay together and fall asleep humming and singing songs together. In later times, I did often reach for her to stay with me during the night and her kissing me goodbye, and how empty I felt. And although she left me, I regret not trying harder to keep her from leaving. But within all of that, I can still feel those beautiful, magical moments, like the afternoon laying in the setting sun in the middle of a farm paddock, and the preciousness of those days lives on.”
Accompanying the track is an introspective music video, produced and directed by Patrick Pierce and Dara Munnis from Dead As Disco (Jimmy Barnes, The Paper Kites, The Cat Empire), that blends stunning visual story telling with incredible production value. Balanced between spectacular arial shots, intimate studio lighting, and projected personal memories behind Justin’s performance, the music video effortlessly ruminates on the track’s subject matter of days gone by.
Justin Davies did not set out to become a singer and songwriter, but the lasting effects of a tragic personal loss and some serendipitous cosmic intervention set him on a hitherto unforeseen path towards extraordinary artistic creation. The youngest member of a musical family that includes ARIA Award-winning musician/composer Ashley Davies and acclaimed singer-songwriter Tanya-Lee Davies, he had spent much of his adult life as a successful entrepreneur and businessman in his native Western Australia. Outside of his professional work, Davies also found time to devote himself to a wide range of philanthropic activities, instigated numerous fundraising events supporting local charities and a variety of national and international nonprofit organizations. But sadly, the untimely passing of a loved one to a fatal overdose more than two decades ago continued to haunt him, colouring his busy life with a bruising heartache and crushing disillusionment he simply couldn’t shake.
Whilst visiting a local music shop in 2023, Davies found himself overpoweringly drawn to “the most beautiful guitar I had ever seen, resting there like it was waiting for me.” Despite little more than a rudimentary ability to play the instrument, he put down a deposit and took the guitar home with the idea of writing a song that would perhaps release some of irrevocable sadness and still-burning love he felt inside. Davies’s fingers intuitively found their place on the fretboard, taking him to the sounds he needed, admittedly without him actually knowing what chords he was playing. Lyrics came just as naturally, emerging from a place of truth and reflection as well as how he hoped others may have felt living through similar longing and regret. Music became his sanctuary, with songs flowing effortlessly until he found himself with more than enough material to consider making an album.
Davies reached out to renowned producer/engineer Rob Grant, thinking the vintage analogue equipment at his Poons Head Studio on the West Coast of Australia would yield a sonic authenticity ideally suited to his classic pop songcraft. Taken with Davies’ intimate, evocative songs, Grant helped enlist a gifted assortment of local musicians who he believed would more than do justice to the purity of the material. The arrangements soon took shape from Davies’ original guitar-and-vocal compositions, with all involved falling into a place of genuine friendship and commitment to the project. Nothing was forced or expected, everything simply flowed from the essence or groove of where or how each song should be in its final form. Together, Davies and his collaborators forged a timeless yet idiosyncratic collection rich with organic spontaneity and emotional depth, with songs like the country-inflected “Never One To Love” and the grooving, Hammond-driven “No Tomorrows” each unfolding with collective harmony and ingenious spirit.
Just one year after his surprising musical journey truly began, Davies is now poised to shared his soulful creation with the world beyond. With Unforgettable Days– and more new music to come, Justin Davies proves himself an exceptionally reflective singer and songwriter of the first order, weaving vulnerable melancholia and wistful resilience into a bittersweet, empathetic baroque pop all his own.
“It’s time and meant to be,” says Justin Davies. “It gives some sort of purpose and meaning to years of starting the days below zero. Without the sadness and searching, I wouldn’t have found my peace within the songs and the songs would never have made their way to the surface. The feelings which had a hold of me would’ve held their grip, and the words and music would never have arrived. Thank goodness to be releasing the song, it’s not an incredibly intricate or an overly complicated song, but it’s the best thing I have ever done.”
Unforgettable Days is out today.
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