From the intricate instrumental opening notes of “Someone’ Else’s Cafe,” Dawes appear to have left off where most fans hoped they would leave off from 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands complete effort. After spending the past months jamming with Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh in his expansive improvisational outings billed as Phil & Friends, Dawes appear to recapture their flair for organic highlights on the seven-tracked Misadventures of Doomscroller. This time the So Cal four pieces show off their accomplished musical chops that run the spectrum from jazz fusion to psychedelic guitar explorations.
And speaking of the Dead, while their first two revered albums (North Hills and Nothing Is Wrong) might serve as their Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, then Misadventures is very well their Wake of the Flood moment, where extended time signature workouts, mingle with thought-provoking ballads. This is easily Dawes’ most musically adventurous album to date, where any Jackson Browne-tinged folk balladry is turned inside out for fusion-flavored wonderment.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being minimalists. With this record we set out on being MAXIMALISTS,” said Goldsmith in a prior press release. “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.”
This ambitious attitude is justifiably shown with slick jazzy overtones of opener “Someone Else’s Cafe” that tackle complicated time changes and move-around compositional patterns in its engulfing nine minutes. And while this is far from a singer-songwriter album, Goldsmith goes from storyteller to full-on band leader, as on “Comes In Waves,” where his vocals echo and reverberate the song’s title theme- not before the band enters another fusiony instrumental mid-section. “Everything is Permanent” again avoids the expected and dives into more impressive instrumental patterns, eschewing any radio placement notions in favor of a true eight-minute jazz-rock effort similar to the chop-filled opener. “Ghost in the Machine,” stammers in hard with an Allman Brothers Band-type shuffle that keeps a mysterious Atlanta Rhythm Section jazzy groove, making this potent composition perhaps the band’s true-to-form jam live vehicle.
Things get simpler with “Joke In There Sometimes,” they touch on their minimalist roots some in this “shorter” five-minute number that has Goldsmith reacclimating to his “song-first” roots. And the nine-minute album closer “Song That No One Made,” takes a page from the Pink Floyd playbook with its crescendoing and slow unfolding artistry that places itself as a pacifying closing statement.
Dawes certainly achieved their goal of honoring the vinyl format in this ambitious recording, which is more organic and musically aware than its more recent predecessor albums.
One Response
Well said! What an impressive album from this, my favorite band for a decade. I can’t wait to hear these songs live.