Dawes likes to stay busy. The Los Angeles-based band’s latest, Passwords, is its sixth full-length album in less than a decade, somewhat of a rarity in today’s age of elongated release and tour cycles. It seems frontman Taylor Goldsmith can’t help but get his detailed, often wistful lyrical musings out there for all to witness. Pair that with a tuneful, Folk-fortified Rock & Roll backdrop reminiscent of the heyday of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon music scene and comparisons to Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills & Nash and the like are inevitable.
The new record — which, like its 2016 predecessor, We’re All Gonna Die, incorporates keyboards in a more robust way — also signals a shift in Goldsmith’s already intimate tales of love and longing.
“Before the new songs, I had never used words like ‘never’ or ‘forever’ in a lyric,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “Now, I’m willing to stand behind those words because I have a commitment to decency that I’ve never felt before. For five albums, I would create an image of someone that wasn’t true to who they were. I’d be in love with an idea. It’s not an uncommon problem.”
Goldsmith’s evolution seems to have been spurred by his engagement to actress/singer Mandy Moore, a development evident throughout Passwords in ways both obvious and subtle. Curiously, now that his personal life is seemingly content, Goldsmith seems to be focusing his sights more fully on the world around him.
Exhibit A is the opening track, “Living in the Future,” an epic of sorts that melds Neil Young-esque guitar riffage with surging keyboards and lyrics about the paranoia induced by modern technology. Goldsmith admits that the future is fraught, but at least he has true love on his side.
Click here for tickets/more show info.
This article appears in Nov 7-14, 2018.
