Dios explores wonderland on ‘We Are Dios’
Kevin Bronson on
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No matter what name we end up knowing them by – Dios, Dios (Malos) or, as their legally safe play now has them billed next week, Wearedios – the underdogs from Hawthorne embody the myth of being in a rock band. They’ve made critically praised music and played Coachella; they’ve gone largely AWOL and faced the reality that an 8.0 from Pitchfork won’t buy you tacos on Imperial Highway.
“It’s easy to develop conflicting feelings about these things,” bassist John Paul Caballero says. “Being in a band is either going to be your dream, or it’s going to leave you broke and miserable. A lot of people look at bands as being symbolic representations of what they want to be, of their aesthetic, their lifestyle. I can’t imagine anybody would look at us, having grown up the way we did, where we did, with what we’ve done, and say, ‘I want to be like Dios.'”
Which doesn’t mean you can’t dial into the quartet’s blue-collar temerity and take a little trip with them. Dios’ third album “We Are Dios” – more than three years in the making – is a boldly experimental foray into psych-pop that’s like fast-forwarding through the Sixties surrounded by funhouse mirrors. On a boat. Without Dramamine.
- ||| Download: Multiple Dios tracks, rounded up by Chris Martins (“Stare at Wheel” is especially recommended).
Songwriter Joel Morales mopes (in his faintly laconic, Everyman way) about death, aging, marriage, beer-soaked benders and ice cream sandwiches amid reverb- and effects-drenched arrangements that give the album an “Alice in Wonderland” innocence. But beneath all the Flaming Lips/Grandaddy ear-tickling, there’s palpable tenderness.
“A song is like a chair – it has to support whatever weight you put on it. Joel’s always said that if you can play a song in your bedroom on an acoustic guitar, it’s a good song,” Caballero says. “Joel is in a world where he’s just being Joel. He’s a renaissance man and a wiseass, and he kinda airs out his grievances in a charming and funny way.”
The album’s long incubation process owes to its being a DIY affair. The foursome’s sophomore album, “Dios (Malos),” was made with producer Phil Ek, but for this effort Morales, Caballero, keyboardist Edward Kampwirth and drummer Patrick Vasquez repaired to their home environs, taking the recordings from Pro Tools, to quarter-inch tape and then to half-inch tape. “It’s like a novel that’s gone through a lot of revisions,” Caballero says, “and it’s more psychedelic than anything we’ve ever done.”
And for a band that’s spent years dodging the shadow of – and resisting comparisons to – Hawthorne’s famous sons the Beach Boys, “We Are Dios” (coming via Buddyhead) feels real.
“Joel’s invented this fictional world, but one that’s a representative picture of where we grew up,” Caballero says. “Hawthorne is not anything that anybody could attach a romantic vision to – a lot of time I feel I’m a primitive from the rainforest being brought into the mainstream of society.”
||| The album: Recommended.
||| Live: Dios celebrates the album release with a free show Tuesday at the Troubadour, supported by the Henry Clay People and Signals.
Esteemed journo Charles Shaar Murray once had a side-project band called Blast Furnace & The Heatwaves, and was sued by British disco band Heatwave who hired all kinds of lawyers and accused the band of ”˜passing off’ as them.
As CSM explained to me: “Well, if I’d wanted to pass a band off as Heatwave, I’d’ve assembled seven black guys in satin jumpsuits and had them play Earth, Wind & Fire knockoffs, but we were five punky looking guys in leather jackets playing amphetamined R&B, so I couldn’t quite see how anybody could get the two bands confused. “