[rating=8.00]
Once the Dodos wrapped recording on 2013’s Carrier, the San Francisco duo realized that they still had a lot more to say. Wanting to capture the momentum, they immediately began laying tracks for their sixth album, Individ. After spending their first several years crafting their distinct and instantly recognizable sound and the last few years trying to shake things up to push the boundaries of their sound, here the Dodos have come full circle to embrace the sound they pioneered.
“Precipitation” begins the album with swelling feedback that is joined by trademark Dodos intricate acoustic picking. In the bridge, guitars crash together in a percussive strum as vocalist Meric Long muses existential: “Could it have been more than this?/ Fakes among the flowers/ Tend to always over-prepare.”
Pounding drums and intricate percussion buttressing acoustic picking has long been the backbone of the Dodos sound, and that is the case on Individ as well, but this time around electric guitar gets a more prominent feature. “The Tide” uses distortion to punctuate its verse-chorus shifts while “Retreiver” features a raunchy guitar riff, Long shredding across the fretboard with the fuzz maxed out.
“Goodbyes and Endings” is perhaps Individ’s most ambitious track, a roller coaster full of discordance, syncopated beats, and shifting time signatures. “And if I cannot be still,” Long sings over frenetic pounding drums, “Would you be alone? Would you care?”
After seven frantic tracks, the Dodos slow it down with “Bastard.” Long plays a fuzzed out guitar with a slow, easy strum while Logan Kroeber provides sparse percussion, mostly with tambourine. The song also features the closest the Dodos will come to a sing-along chorus, with Long and Kroeber harmonizing, “I feel your need to recover/ I’m no longer your bastard.” The song is a breath of fresh air after being bludgeoned for seven tracks with the Dodos trademark hyperactivity.
While Individ doesn’t break any new ground, there’s something to be said for the Dodos settling into their niche rather than continuing to try to break out of it. Fans of the band will enjoy Individ because it has all of the best qualities of the first few Dodos albums, from the virtuoso instrumentation to the frantic strumming to the percussion-heavy acoustics.
