Stream: Deep Sea Diver, ‘Lights Out’

Kevin Bronson on August 4th, 2020

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Deep Sea Diver, the Seattle outfit helmed by O.C. native (and touring guitarist for Beck, the Shins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more) Jessica Dobson, have announced that their third album “Impossible Weight” will be out Oct. 16 via High Beam Records.

The new single “Lights Out” arrives in a flashing flurry of propulsive bass and angular distortion, with Dobson’s tough-’n’-tender vocals squarely in the front. The album, the follow-up to 2016’s “Secrets,” found Dobson working through a personally difficult time during which she’d lost the musical spark and suffered bouts of depression. “‘Lights Out’ was written around the time I hit that wall when we first started working on the record,” she says. “It’s about fumbling through the darkness and knowing I damn well need help getting out.”

Doing volunteer work at Seattle’s Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for homeless people, helped Dobson gain perspective. “I spent a lot of time with the women who frequent the Commons, and it taught me a new depth of empathy,” she says. “They’re people who don’t have the luxury of going back to a home at the end of the day and hiding behind those four walls, so they’re sort of forced to be vulnerable with what their needs are. Talking with them and listening to them really freed me up to start writing about things I’d never written about before in my songs.”

Then, in making the album at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice with bandmates Peter Mansen (her drummer husband), Garrett Gue (bass) and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth), Dobson was pushed further. She co-produced “Impossible Weight” with Andy D. Park (Pedro the Lion, Noah Gundersen, Zander Hawley). “I’d never produced a record before, and I started out with low expectations for myself, but at some point I realized, ‘I can do this,’” Dobson says. “I decided to completely trust my voice and make really bold decisions in all my production calls — just push everything to the absolute outer edges.”

The album does not include Deep Sea Diver’s explosive April single “Stop Pretending,” but “Impossible Weight” does arrive at a heavy time. “Especially right now when the world is in disarray and there’s so much fear, I want this record to give people room to feel whatever they need to feel,” Dobson says. “I hope it helps them recognize that it’s okay to fall apart, and that they’re meant to let others in instead of trying to work through everything on their own. Because the point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone—that’s why it’s impossible.”

(Guitar players, see the tablature for the song in the video below, and best of luck.)

||| Stream: “Lights Out”