Oh Brother by Dawes
The pejorative term “dad rock” suggests the musical equivalent of glutinous comfort food for men who have turned away from modern pop culture. Perhaps “hip-uncle rock” would better describe Dawes on the Los Angeles band’s ninth album, Oh Brother.
Siblings Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith—the latter the drummer, the former the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter—remain enamored of the L.A. Laurel Canyon folk-rock sound, but they’re also hyper-aware of 21st-century travails, and they and Mike Viola (who’s also worked with Mandy Moore and Andrew Bird) co-produce this music while attuned to both vintage and contemporary aesthetics.
The opening track, “Mr. Los Angeles,” encapsulates the combination: over Griffin’s ultra-crisp percussion, Taylor lays down lite-funk riffs and lyrics about a man with a trainer-cum-shaman, a therapist inclined toward buzzwords like “toxic,” and a booking for a potentially controversial Taco Bell commercial. It’s not unlike an Eagles or Poco song in which the addict trades illicit drugs for clickbait currency.
Oh Brother has the melodic body of Jackson Browne’s golden period, guided by the dark mind of the late Warren Zevon. Almost in spite of pop prettification and Griffin’s warm shuffle, “The Game” gradually turns chilling as it chronicles a rise to stardom, and the Joe Walsh guitar crunch of “Front Row Seat” only highlights Taylor’s hazy acceptance of our end-time possibilities.
All is not doom: “House Parties” twangs cutely, like a Jimmy Buffett crowd-pleaser, and the jokily beleaguered narrator favors the simpler pleasures, and the tune is incredibly catchy even if the sentiment strains for Roger Miller’s unpretentiousness almost as much as Buffett did.
In the middle of Oh Brother, though, sequenced between “Surprise!” and “King of the Never Wills”—two languid ballads of maturity and disappointment—“House Parties” is an oasis of levity. Dawes knows the hip uncle lives alone.
Get Oh Brother at Amazon here.
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