 | |
 | Download Example 1 Tap Tempo Mode - Edge knob low, middle & high. Strat, middle. |
| Download Example 2 Tap Tempo Mode - 10 seconds between taps. Strat, bridge. |
| Download Example 3 Ramp Mode - ramping between slow (1 o'clock) and fast (4 o'clock) speeds. Edge 11 o'clock, Ramp 2 o'clock. Strat, bridge. |
| Download Example 4 Ramp Mode - Slow 12 o'clock, Fast 2 o'clock. PRS Mira X, both humbuckers. Pedal in effects loop. |
| Download Example 5 Tap Tempo Mode - Edge 11 o'clock, Slow 10 o'clock. Mira X, bridge. Pedal in effects loop. |
| All clips recorded with Digidesign Eleven Rack. | |
Phase of the Future
The Keeley Electronics Phaser is a 6-stage phase shifter that features an analog circuit based on OTA ICs (Operational Transconductance Amplifier Integrated Circuits). OTA-style phasers are known for their shimmery characteristics and lush sound. The Keeley Phaser is the first OTA analog phaser with two control modes: Tap tempo and Leslie-style ramping that allows you to merge seamlessly between two different speeds. In Tap mode, tapping a tempo on the footswitch or adjusting the speed knob controls the phase rate. When using Ramp mode, the second footswitch changes between fast and slow speeds. Users can either switch between two speeds instantly, or have the phaser gradually go between the two speeds. Ramp mode emulates the brake on a Leslie in terms of the phase speeding up and slowing down.
The Keeley Phaser pedal consists of Edge and Ramp knobs as well as Fast and Slow speed knobs. A mini-toggle switch lets you choose between Tap and Ramp modes. Besides an on/off footswitch, there is a footswitch that performs double duty as a Tap Tempo in Tap Mode, and a switch between Slow and Fast in Ramp Mode. The LED lights on the pedal indicate when the pedal is on and what mode you are in, and blinking LEDs indicate the speed of the phaser. In and out jacks and a 9V power supply jack round out the features. The pedal is true bypass, and everything is housed in a case sturdy enough to handle any stomping you may do on it. The Keeley Phaser pedal that I received was a metallic green, but it is also available in other colors such as Translucent Blue, Black Sparkle and Classic Silver. You can also contact Keeley to find out what custom colors they can do for you.
The Keeley Phaser is an analog pedal, although it does have hybrid-digital circuitry that controls the flow of the analog signal. With the speed ramps and tap tempos, they tried to create those features without digital help at first, but it became apparent that it was very limiting. The digital circuitry allows the phaser to be adjusted to the exact speed you are tapping and provides greater control over the effect overall. However, the guitar signal is never sampled and the sound is never deconstructed, so the signal remains 100% analog throughout the pedal.
Plugging In
Without reading the manual first, I immediately plugged in to the pedal and start messing around with the controls, like I do with most new pedals I receive. Even though it's good for instant gratification, it doesn't always help you understand exactly what each control is supposed to do! For that reason, I highly recommend you read the manual first with the Keeley Phaser, so you learn how each control knob functions and how to use the pedal in both Tap and Ramp Modes.
In Tap Mode, you simply tap on the footswitch to get a good rhythm going and the phaser follows along nicely. You need to tap the switch in pairs of two to establish a tempo. Otherwise, the next time you tap the switch it will leave you with a really long phase time. The Keeley Phaser is capable of producing very slow speeds if that's what you desire. For example, you can tap the switch and then wait about 30 seconds to tap it again and you'll get a very slow phase.
The phase effect itself was deep and rich in tone, and I got some lush, swirly effects out of it. The Edge knob controls the depth of the effect as well as the envelope filter, which changes where the signal is phased the hardest. You can get anything from a very subtle phase to wild, aggressive phasing. I've always loved the smooth, swirly sound that a phaser can give to my guitar tone, especially for a clean sound, and the Keeley Phaser didn't disappoint.
I experimented with different tempos and various times in between clicks on the Tap Tempo switch. I waited about 10 seconds between clicks and the result was a subtle, slow phase. If you turn up the Edge knob, you can make the phase more drastic. This slow phase is particularly useful to keep things interesting if you are playing the same musical phrase over and over again.
After reading the manual to learn how to initially set up the pedal in Ramp mode, I was able to set up various ramps rather quickly. You simply set one Speed knob to a slow speed, and the other to a faster speed. By the way, the two speeds knobs are identical in function and they're just labeled Fast and Slow to give more meaning to the controls, as opposed to just labeling them Speed knobs 1 and 2. So actually you can set the Slow knob to a fast speed and vice versa, if you wanted to. I set the two Speed knobs to 10 and 2 o'clock respectively for a nice variety of fast and slow. The Ramp knob determines how fast the ramp is between speeds. If you have the Ramp knob all the way up for a fast ramp, it's pretty much an instant switch between the two speeds. Turning the Ramp knob counter-clockwise, the phase rate will speed up and down gradually and smoothly. You just simply press the Slow/Fast switch to go between the two speeds.
If you choose a slower ramp, you'll want to play phrases that are constant and continual to hear the full effect, because if you hit just one chord and try to ramp up or down with it, chances are the chord will die out before the effect does, so you won't hear the entire ramp. The ramp feature can be very useful for highlighting different parts of a song, and you can have the phase slow down at the end if the song has a final ritard.
The Final Mojo
Overall I was happy with the lush, warm sounds produced by the Keeley Phaser, and it offers features never before seen on a phaser pedal. I was able to get good sounds quickly, and it responded well to the many situations I put it in, whether it was before or after distortion or in an effects loop. If you're looking to sweeten your sound and have more control over your phase effect, the Keeley Phaser is worth checking out.
Buy if...
you'd like perfect control over your phase rate
Skip if...
you don't want or need the Tap Tempo or Ramping feature for your phase pedal
Rating...
Street $249 - Keeley Electronics - robertkeeley.com |
Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter Distortion Pedal
With its take on the cult-classic, chainsaw distortion pedal, the EHX Hell Melter takes distortion to its extremes. The Hell Melter features expanded controls and tonal capabilities, allowing the already in-your-face sound of the pedal to broaden by switching to more open clipping options and boosting the internal voltage for increased headroom, less compression, and more attack.
Originally designed as the ultimate in high-gain tone, this world-famous distortion circuit is known for the death metal sounds of Sweden’s Entombed and the shoegaze wash of My Bloody Valentine. It’s even found a home in the rig of David Gilmour!
The EHX Hell Melter’s expanded control set includes Gain and Level controls, and a powerful active EQ featuring with parametric mids for improved versatility. The Dry level control allows for blending your input signal for improved low-end when used with a bass or even blending in other distorted tones.
Boost Footswitch engages an input gain boost and volume boost which is internally adjustable. The Normal/Burn switch toggles between the classic chainsaw sound and the more open clipping option.
For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.