Deep Sea Diver is excited to announce its third album Impossible Weight, which will arrive October 16, 2020 via High Beam Records (distributed by ATO Records). To ring in the announcement, the group — led by Seattle’s Jessica Dobson (once the lead guitarist for Beck, The Shins and many more) — has shared the video for new single “Lights Out,” which was created by Dobson herself and displays the guitar tablature for the song as the notes are being played.
Following a year featuring tours with Wilco and Joseph, Deep Sea Diver has hardly stayed quiet. In April the band released “Stop Pretending,” a single born of their weekly live-streamed performances from their home studio during the initial period of social isolation. The single struck a chord with fans and press alike, even earning a slot on NPR Music’s “Favorite Songs of 2020 (So Far)” list. Look out for new music coming soon, including a track with a very special assist from one Sharon Van Etten.
The third full-length from Deep Sea Diver, Impossible Weight is a work of sublime highs and mesmerizing lows, its restless intensity both unsettling and transcendent. For bandleader Jessica Dobson, the album’s sonic and emotional expanse stems from a period of sometimes-brutal self-examination—a process that began not long after the Seattle-based four-piece finished touring for their acclaimed sophomore effort Secrets.
“We went into the studio pretty quickly after the tour ended, and I sort of hit a wall where I was feeling very detached from making music, and unable to find joy in it,” says the vocalist/multi-instrumentalist, whose bandmates include her husband Peter Mansen (drums), Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth). “I realized I had to try to rediscover my voice as a songwriter, and figure out the vocabulary for what I needed to say on this album.”
As she stepped back from the studio, Dobson focused on dealing with the depression she’d been struggling with, and soon started volunteering for Aurora Commons (a drop-in center for unhoused people, most of whom are drug-dependent and engage in street-survival-based sex work). “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.”
Co-produced by Dobson and Andy D. Park (Pedro the Lion, Ruler) and mainly recorded at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice, Impossible Weight brings that emotional excavation to a more grandiose sound than Deep Sea Diver has ever attempted. Along with revealing the limitless imagination of Dobson’s guitar work—a prodigious talent she’s previously shown in playing lead guitar for artists like Beck and The Shins—the album’s lush textures and mercurial arrangements more fully illuminate the power of her vocals. “’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 recalls. “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.”
DEEP SEA DIVER
IMPOSSIBLE WEIGHT
(HIGH BEAM RECORDS VIA ATO RECORDS)
RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 16, 2020
1. Shattering The Hourglass
2. Lights Out
3. Wishing
4. Impossible Weight (feat. Sharon Van Etten)
5. Switchblade
6. Hurricane
7. Eyes Are Red (Don’t Be Afraid)
8. People Come People Go
9. Lightning Bolts
10. Run Away With Me
