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Review: 'Dawes'
'We're All Gonna Die'   

-  Album: 'We're All Gonna Die' -  Label: 'HUB Records'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: '16th September 2016'

Our Rating:
Is there a point when an album’s namedrop brag quotient outweighs its artistic merit? It may sound like a particularly facetious and perhaps even twattishly flippant question, but bear with me. Names have marketability in a commercial world. Just as movie studios are more than happy to pay top dollar for A-list actors and big-name producers because people will flock to the cinemas to see a film based on reputation alone, so record labels are eager to get artists and producers of renown to feature on the latest act they’ve deigned to plug – or fleece out of any royalties for the rest of their lives, depending.

The new album by Dawes, which, allegedly, is ‘highly anticipated’. I wonder how many of their 90,000 Facebook likers have actually heard more than one or two songs, let alone bought an album or seen them play live. The point being, how many people, in real terms, are on the edge of their metaphorical seats for this? So the PR machine makes a major deal of the roll-call of collaborators and contributors. It’s handy having big-name artists feature on a song because it means there’s more scope for sales from a crossover fanbase. And so it is that ‘We’re All Gonna Die’ was recorded at EastWest Studios (Los Angeles, CA) with additional recording at The Boat (Silverlake, CA) and was produced by Grammy-nominated producer Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes). The album’s ten ‘original’ tracks include backing vocals from Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, Mandy Moore, Will Oldham and Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius. Needless to say, this makes it a mist-buy release. Mandy Moore? Wow! Jim James of My Morning Jacket? It must be good! And so on.

And possible excitement all this listology may elicit is likely to be dampened considerably on hearing the first few tracks.

Yes, the sparse brooding of the title track, which is second in the running order, is surprising in its downtempo vibe, but swings the heartache and amps up the soul with a quavering, falsetto croon of a vocal delivery. It offers false hope that the album is going to be any more than a half-arsed mixed bag of bollocks.

Pulling in all of the worst aspects of 70s rock, commercial soul, and radio-friendly funk-tinged reggae, the ingredients are all simmered into a MOR slop and served tepidly on a hipster slate with an oversized side-order of sincerity and muso earnestness. The production works that slickly compressed, radio-friendly, mid 80s chart style, just to accentuate the derivative blandness.


  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Dawes - We're All Gonna Die