Dopapod began just over a decade ago as a keyboards/drums duo with fellow Berklee School of Music wonks Eli Winderman and Michelangelo Carubba. Over the next two years, the pair added guitarist Bruce Compa, bassist Chuck Jones and percussionist Neal Evans (who switched to drums with Carubba’s departure, and then was replaced by Scotty Zwang, but returned in 2013 after Zwang left). The band released its debut album, Radar, a decade ago. The Prog/Jam collective has since become renowned for its almost constant road presence, generating (and then transcending) comparisons to the likes of Disco Biscuits, Phish and Frank Zappa.
In the early days, it wasn’t difficult to connect the dots of Dopapod’s influences and their subsequent sonic translations: wild time signature and melodic shifts; abrupt changes in dynamics, from rafter-rattling volume to lean-in-and-listen quietude; long solo breaks; and lyrical passages that suggested herbal mind expansion and reflection (at least since 2012’s Redivider, as the first two albums were instrumentals).
That latter quality leaked over to the titling of Dopapod’s albums, all of which have been palindromes, reading the same left to right or right to left, including 2011’s I Saw Live Dopapod, Evil Was I. Only their most recent concert recording, Live at the Capitol Theatre, has broken the palindromic string.
After 2017’s Hip Hop-tinged Prog set Megagem and its naturally strenuous touring cycle, Dopapod announced they would neither record nor tour in 2018 in order for band members to recharge and spend time with family and friends.
The quartet’s fifth studio album, Emit Time, was released back in May and is comprised of music that each member conceived on their own during the hiatus. In many respects, Emit Time is a return to the sound and texture of Dopapod’s early works, as well as the vocal shift on Redivider.
Dopapod plays Covington’s Madison Theater on Saturday, Dec. 7 with Paris Monster. Tickets/more info: madisontheater.com.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 10, 2019.