Photo: facebook.com/dawestheband
Dawes
This story is featured in CityBeat's Feb. 22 print issue.
Dawes just can’t stop, never going more than two years without releasing new material.
The Los Angeles-based quartet’s eighth studio album, the evocatively titled Misadventures of Doomscroller, dropped last summer. Sure enough, it’s another tuneful set in the Jackson Browne realm of self-reflection and cultural assessment, backed by a tastefully rendered mix of rock, pop and folk, as well as a previously underutilized experimental streak.
“The more I’m honest with myself about whatever I want as a creative person — and when I’m making no concessions to what I think someone’s going
to want or what a label might say, or a manager, or a friend — I’m rewarded for it every single time,” frontman Taylor Goldsmith told Paste about Dawes’ current creative direction in a July interview.
The nine-minute-plus album opener “Someone Else’s Café/Doomscroller Tries to Relax” veers off into jammy, jazz-infected territory via soaring guitars, dexterous rhythms and atmospheric piano and keyboard work. The next song, “Comes in Waves,” is equally searching, a wistful, meditative journey into the philo- sophical as Goldsmith sings, “I think I’ve found something in common/With noth- ingness and God/You stare at either in the face too long/They’ll do each other’s job.” Nine-minute album closer “Sound That No One Made/Doomscroller Sunrise” all but confirms Dawes’ dive into Grateful Dead worship, as Jerry Garcia-worthy guitar excursions mingle with cosmic lyrics about life, death and everything in between.
And, of course, there’s inevitably a tour to match each new effort, another chance for Goldsmith to deliver his earnest lyrical observations and modest but often affecting vocals in a live setting. The band confirmed their latest tour with this Twitter post: “Happy to announce the Misadventures of Doomscroller headline tour. 2 sets. Just us. Long nights. Full hearts. Come early. We’ll have to break out the catalogue master lists and bingo cards as we try to get to every song we’ve got.”
No word yet on how many of Dawes’ more than 80 tunes will make the cut, but let’s hope the majority of the new — often otherworldly — stuff is explored.
Dawes plays Taft Theatre at 8 p.m. March 8. Doors open at 7 p.m. Info: tafttheatre.org.
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