Nik Freitas: Sun Down Album Review

I first heard Nik in Silver Lake earlier this year playing with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. His railing guitar riffs augmented Conor’s more acoustic tendencies, and his clean voice contrasted Conor’s famous trembling indie voice.  Thus, when I heard Nik’s solo album Sun Down, I was not suprised that it was much more low-key and lo-fi than Oberst’s Outer South…

Listen to the way Freitas’ voice contrasts with Oberst’s here on Nikorette:

The album begins with the title track Sun Down — a deeply personal song with a surface-level light acoustic feeling, but a darker brooding theme beneath. The bare bones approach follows his lyrics, where he says. “I wanna skip all the spaces where the air gets thin /Taking all the backstreets avoiding where the ends meet up again.” The bare bones acoustic guitar with lyrics that ask us if there is something beyond suburban life reminds me Eddie Vedder’s approach when he created the Into the Wild Soundtrack.

Oh My God, the second song on the album, reminds me of Charlie Brown comics I read as a kid when Freitas says he’s, “Checking the mailbox for some reply / I’ve got nothing better now to do.” The song has a nice guitar solo and is another deeply personal track given to us from the heart.

After two slower tracks, Freitas gives us a more upbeat song entitled All The Way Down. The irony of the song is in the Beatlesque melody (the song’s melody reminds of something like McCartney’s When I’m Sixty Four off Sgt. Peppers), but the deeply depressing state of finding yourself “all the way down.” In the song, Freitas talks of chapter nine and bombs pulling nations apart.

Click to play Nik Freitas' - All The Way Down

What You Become, the fourth track on the album is my favorite track. The song is about the tragic fact that so many people end up where they don’t want to be. It is a place where I personally have been, and Freitas does great justice to the emotions one feels during these deep valleys.

Sophie, the fifth song, is a fun blues-based song reminiscent of John Lee Hooker, and the sixth song, Love Around, sounds like it grabs some of its influence from David Gray (and also has a nice whistling section). The seventh song, It Ain’t Like That has a free flowing lyrical quality similar to that of Jason Mraz.

See me There is another deeply introspective song by Freitas, and I love lyrics to the chorus:

Somewhere there’s a picture of people
That fell in love back then
And it could be you
I’m sitting in a box somewhere
Wondering where to go
You can see me there.

The universality of Freitas’ ninth song on the album – Comes To Me – rings through with the vague term, “it comes to me again.” He is good at making the songs personally universal. While the lyrics may have deep personal meaning for him, he allows for others to take what they may from his lyrics.

I highly recommend you buy this album (btw, if you want to waste your money you can buy it from iTunes7digital for just $7.77) or Amazon for $9.90 or you can save money and buy it from

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