Review // "Chili" - September 2004

Here we were walking around thinking that Saybia was a bunch of regular, earthbound, and almost boring guys in worn out denim clothes. That kind, who easily can be successful without losing balance because of that. And then it shows that the massive breakthrough with the debut The Second You Sleep almost broke up the band. Resulting in flat batteries, artistic disorder and dying friendships. “Highways and hotels and headliner shows, it’s all just making me sad”, Søren Huus sings somewhere on the new album These Are The Days. An album that in such an extent shows a band, which nearly cracked up. “We’re standing close now, to breaking up, from coast to coast, we wave our flags for nothing”, it continues in another of the songs, where Søren wrote his way out of the crisis. It has obviously been completely bad, but Saybia succeeded in finding focus again and These Are The Days is actually an artistic step forward for the band. The resemblance to Travis and Coldplay, which was too big on the debut album, is toned down here. But it is still the melancholy and the wind-swept feelings, which mark the album. Because even though the album starts off half rocked with the excellent single Brilliant Sky, it is the ballads that dominate. It gets too grandiose sometimes as are Søren Huus’ lyrics not always sophisticated. But there are several songs that will be genuine Saybia hits – the smoochy tune Surrender and the comprehensive Bend The Rules as the best suggestions.
Almost 130.000 Danes bought The Second You Sleep and they will not go wrong in buying the new album. Søren Huus still has a fine and identifying voice and the band has added more facets to their playing. Hopefully Saybia has learnt to control their success because with These Are The Days noting predicts that it will end soon.

The album is given 4 out of 5 possible chilis.