| March 8, 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Lyrics: These days my friends don’t seem to know me
But you got that special kind of sadness When people ask me where I come from Cause you got that special kind of sadness I used to think someone would love me But you got that special kind of sadness That only comes from time spent in Los Angeles That only comes from time spent in Los Angeles
Get It: Pick up your copy of Dawes’ Nothing is Wrong at Amazon today. You’ll feel better. And while you’re at, you can’t go wrong with this gem from The New Basement Tapes:
Dances with Bass YouTube Channel:
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Back when I started this blog in December 2015, the second track I featured was a Dawes track—That Western Skyline from the band’s debut album, North Hills. I remember thinking that if my music blog lived long enough, I’d come back to Dawes again (and again). Dawes hails from Los Angeles and is generally pigeonholed as a folk-rock, though one could call them alt-country, pop, or just straight up rock with none of those descriptions being less accurate than the other. One of the things I love about music—especially as an older, and ostensibly, wiser listener is that I don’t feel the need to put labels on my music or to “stay in my musical lane” as I felt when I was younger. I remember a time when listening to anything that wasn’t straight up rock and roll was something that might have embarrassed me. I actually owned CDs that I was embarrassed to own because I thought someone might consider me to be uncool because I liked a few George Michael tracks. Today, I have no such compunctions, and in fact, I gravitate toward artists who simply make music and who let the critics fight over what bucket to put them in (or whether buckets even exist). When I listen to Dawes, I am swept by vocalist Taylor Goldsmith’s haunting and emotive voice and his heartfelt, if not sometimes odd, lyrics. Rather than eliciting images of cardboard people and cookie-cutter themes exploring the same lyrical tropes, Goldsmith infuses his songs with personalized—possibly even stream of consciousness–styled—lyrics that speak to the personal nature of his work. When I listen to a Dawes track, I feel as though I am listening to a song that is specific to the songwriter and not just a song that explores the guy-meets-girl-guy-loves-girl-guy-gets-dumped-by-said-girl model that begs artists to re-plumb the same territory again and again. While Dawes certainly provides a thesis-level look at heartbreak, it does with a sense of style that is all its own. Time Spent in Los Angeles has a definite 1970s southern California vibe that fits nicely alongside other tracks in the Dances with Bass playlists, which often skew heavily into alt-country, Americana, folk, and 1970s tracks. In its nine-year career to date, Dawes has released five studio albums and two live works, making them one of the more prolific artists in modern-day music. Better yet, Dawes writes albums, not singles, so when you purchase one of their records, you’re getting just that—a record that has been crafted from opening note to closing note, and not just one good single and a bunch of second-rate filler. As I often encourage readers to do, listen to this track (and That Western Skyline) with a good pair of headphones. The layering and interplay of instruments is exceptional. To me, this song is made perfect in equal measures by Goldsmith’s smooth voice and the Hammond organ pumping in the background, which provides the perfect backbone for one of my favorite tracks in my expansive music collection. And if you’re taken away by Goldsmith’s voice, you should also be sure to check out The New Basement Tapes, which is a supergroup consisting of Goldsmith, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Elvis Costello, Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford, and Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens. We featured the track, Kansas City, not long after starting this blog. The tracks on 2014’s Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes are a collection of songs written but never recorded by Bob Dylan, and it was the brainchild of none other than T Bone Burnett. Video: The official video for Time Spent in Los Angeles is below:
And because we’re givers here at the Dances with Bass music mill, here is the video for the aforementioned Kansas City by the New Basement Tapes. On this track, Marcus Mumford takes the lead with Goldsmith and Jim James providing backing vocals. (James also provides a fuzzy-perfect guitar solo. And we’d just like to mention that you know you have an all-star band of musicians when Jim James isn’t singing lead. He’s a force of nature on his own.)
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