Mostly Blue - "In The Dark" | Song Review

MOSTLY BLUE | “IN THE DARK”

“In the Dark” appears on Mostly Blue’s 2024 album Red Radio, but Denis Hulett wrote the song decades earlier during a difficult period in his life. Denis has explained that he was dealing with depression and had spent several days mostly in bed. Knowing that history changes the way I hear the song. The darkness in the title isn’t simply nighttime atmosphere; it also suggests isolation, uncertainty and the private thoughts that become harder to avoid when everything is quiet.

Musically, the song doesn’t become weighed down by its subject. A warm, swinging acoustic guitar groove keeps it moving, while mandolin fills add colour to the arrangement. Set in a mid-tempo 4/4 metre at approximately 110 BPM, the lightly swung 16th-note feel and syncopated vocal anticipations keep the performance relaxed while giving the vocal a slight forward pull.

The song is grounded in G major, using familiar G, C and D harmony through much of the verse and pre-chorus. When the chorus opens on Em (the relative minor), the tonal colour darkens without pulling the song completely away from its established warmth. The change is small, but its timing is effective: the harmony darkens just as the lyric turns inward.

There is also humour mixed into the reflection. That matters because the song doesn’t present depression as one continuous dramatic emotion. It moves between loneliness, self-awareness, love, memory and the strange clarity that sometimes arrives late at night. The answering-machine reference dates the lyric without making the song feel dated. It preserves the voice of the person Denis was when he wrote it.

For a song that came out of several days in bed, “In the Dark” spends remarkably little time lying down.

I love that contradiction!

Denis Hulett wrote, performed, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered “In the Dark” himself.

What makes “In the Dark” effective is the contrast between its subject and its movement. The lyric comes from a painful place, but the recording remains warm, conversational and alive. It feels less like a song attempting to explain depression and more like an honest record of someone trying to understand himself while he was still inside it.

Discover More Music

For more music in the spirit of “In the Dark,” visit the Mostly Blue Poets & Six-Strings playlist, curated by Denis Hulett and friends.
https://vibevlt.com/mostlyblue/poets-sixstrings

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