David Courtney - First Day: The Complete Story (2023)

David Courtney's career is so bound up within the early years of Leo Sayer's that it is sometimes easy to forget that he was a phenomenal performer in his own right, and not just the man who managed, produced, and wrote the unknown Leo to glory. First Day was released in 1975 and, in many ways, points out the direction that Sayer might have gone had their partnership not gone awry. Compare Courtney's version of the opening "Silverbird" with the sparse piano-and-voice-led rendition that titled Sayer's debut album; vast and vastly theatrical, it is a tsunami compared to Sayer's gentle ripple, and it sets the stage for an album whose middle name could have been Theatrical Overkill -- in the best possible way. First Day roars and stirs, it howls at the moon, and -- two years before Meat Loaf let the first bat out of hell -- it sees the art of the singer/songwriter as something to shout from the front row of an orchestra. "Don't Look Now," "Stranded," "Don't Let the Photos Fool You," and "Take This Mask Away" (a song undisguisedly intended for Sayer) all punch and pummel the listener, while no less than seven outtakes from the LP sessions bolster the 2009 Angel Air reissue by serving up further ambition and excitement. All around, then, First Day is an album that demands your ears, and then carries them off to the most miraculous places. © Dave Thompson