Stream: Dawes, ‘Someone Else’s Café / Doomscroller Tries to Relax’

Kevin Bronson on May 6th, 2022

0

Credit where it’s due: Dawes have encapsulated the COVID-19 era in the title of its new album alone. “Misadventures of a Doomscroller” the L.A. quartet’s eighth full-length and second for Rounder Records, will be out July 22.

Produced by longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, it finds the band — Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, Wylie Gelber and Lee Pardini — embracing the vinyl era and all its jazzy-jammy goodness. The 9 1/2-minute medley released today, “Someone Else’s Café / Doomscroller Tries to Relax,” exhibits their instinctive prowess and uninhibited approach.

Gelber describes the album this way: “Eight legs and eight arms, in a room, stretching deeper than we ever knew we could … The intros have outros. The outros have bridges.”

Adds Goldsmith: “We’ve always prided ourselves on being minimalists. With this record we set out on being maximalists,” says Goldsmith. “Still a quartet. Still not letting these songs hide behind any tricks or effects. But really letting the songs breathe and stretch and live however they want to. We decided to stop having any regard for short attention spans. Our ambitions go beyond the musical with this one.”

As for the long jam that introduces record … If, as Taylor Goldsmith sings, “We’re all waiting tables / In someone else’s café,” there is still room for self-determination.

“The first half of this song could be about tyrants,” Taylor Goldsmith says. “But it could also be about anyone who thinks that a little more control is gonna make everything OK. The second half is a response to that developing reality of the first half. The world might be a scary place sometimes but, to some degree, I want to believe I can decide how I respond to it.”

Of making the song, he adds: “Every time a take was completed felt like a major accomplishment. It being 10 minutes really raised the stakes. Didn’t wanna be the guy to mess up in minute 7 or 8 with everyone playing flawlessly up to that point. This whole album, and this song especially, felt a little beyond our comfort zone and I’m really proud of what that’s done to the music. I like to think that you can hear the eye contact, that you can hear us thinking on our feet. It’s already become a top-fiver to play live.”

Speaking of live, Dawes have posted a limited-time video of the band performing the entire new album at EastWest Studios. It’s available for viewing through 9 p.m. Sunday.

||| Stream: “Someone Else’s Café” / “Doomscroller Tries to Relax”