I admit, when I loaded Messages In Blood by Dan Pettitt for the first time, I didn’t quite know what to expect—but by the time it ended, I was left with a sense that I’d been somewhere worthwhile. The record carries a quiet weight, one that sneaks up on you, feeds on your attention, and sticks around after the final chord.
Right off the bat there’s a tone of unguarded honesty—Pettitt’s voice, often paired just with acoustic guitar, comes across as straightforward and unpretentious. Some tracks drag you close, like you’re leaning in across a kitchen table having a late-night talk; others take a breath and let space do the work. There’s a track called “Drop Out” that cuts deep, where the lyrical direction edges into vulnerability and uncertainty, and you catch yourself holding your breath waiting for what comes next. The moments when things pull back, when the instrumentation softens and there’s silence just on the verge of speaking, those are the moments that linger.
It’s not a flashy record; it doesn’t try to impress you with bombast. What it does do is carve rooms where emotion can stay. On “Stones That You Throw,” there’s a shift toward somber reflection, and it feels very human—fallible, a little bruised. At times the album circles back (the opener echoes the ending), and I liked that, because it gave the sense of a journey completed, like you’ve walked somewhere emotionally and ended up back at the threshold, changed or at least more aware.
Pettitt doesn’t hide behind layers; you hear the cracks, the breaths, the soft hesitation in his inflection. That makes it feel grounded and real. And though a listener might imagine echoes of ’70s folk rock in his style, there’s also something contemporary in how he uses restraint—moments where less really is more, where quiet tells more than noise.
There are passages where your mind drifts into your own stories: loss, longing, frustration, redemption. The album gives enough space that you end up filling in your own lines. And that, to me, is a big part of its appeal—it’s not prescribing feelings, it’s offering a mirror.
If you haven’t already, give Messages In Blood a listen from start to finish in one sitting. Let it walk with you. And once you feel that connection, follow Dan Pettitt on social media and hit him up on Spotify so you don’t miss what he’s doing next.
