We have even more pedal reviews for those with stomp cravings. Check out our roundup for the first 28!
In this review:
Mad Professor Little Green Wonder
Oohlala Ultraviolet
Demeter OD-1 Overdrivulator
Visual Sound V2 Route 808
Visual Sound V2 Son of Hyde
Tim Champion Clapthena
Tim Champion Fuzzar-o
by Adam Moore Designer Bjorn Juhl describes the Little Green Wonder on the Mad Professor website as, “a TS-style pedal, but one for those who generally don’t like TS-style pedals.” After playing this pedal for a decent amount of time, you’ll quickly realize that Juhl has found perhaps the most effective way to describe it. While it’s near impossible to write a review of the LGW without a Tube Screamer comparison or three – even if you’re trying to block it out of your mind, the metallic green housing and the name itself will function to remind you what you’re playing – the LGW follows faithfully in the Mad Professor formula of pushing circuits towards the more refined side of the spectrum. From the very start, you’ll likely feel like you’re plugging into an old friend; the Volume knob acts as expected, and reveals a huge amount of headroom hidden beneath the surface – cranking the Volume with the Drive all the way back reveals a more than capable clean boost. The Drive knob takes things from a barely-there grit to full on Stevie Ray in a fairly tight range, and at all settings the LGW was exceptionally responsive and dynamic – it felt like it was truly a part of my amp, not an add-on in the signal chain. And while a good Tube Screamer feels like this too, the sheer transparency of the Mad Professor LGW makes this pedal the ideal partner for any number of the complex boutique amps currently dominating guitarists’ X-mas wishlists. With less compression and more warmth than the other green box, the LGW steps out of the way and lets your [insert pricey boutique amp here] do all the talking. But if the LGW was just a high-end clone, we probably wouldn’t be this excited. The Body control is the real secret here, expanding its tonal range and voice. While there’s always an element of midrange present in the LGW, you now have a lot more versatility in how to harness it. With the Body control at noon, you’ll hear that classic midrange “hump”; pushing it to the right adds in a treble boost and gives the LGW extra clarity and cut; turning it to left adjusts the boost downward into the low-mids, imparting an full figure to the signal, perfect for those smooth solos and cool autumn evenings. It cleans up perfectly with a turn of the volume knob, and plays nicely with humbuckers, as well. If you’re yearning for a TS-type pedal that is in reality a lot more, you’ll definitely fall in love with this Little Green Wonder. If you can swing the price tag, do yourself a favor and plug into the latest, greatest export from Finland. Buy if...
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by Adam Moore Is there such a thing as too much fuzz? It’s a big question, and one that will likely stir up strong feelings among players; there has always been a certain amount of joy in feeding a chain of fuzz boxes signals, watching the sound become filthier and filthier before it implodes under its own weight. But sometimes you need to scale things back, to harness the power of the fuzz box for more socially acceptable uses – clean it up for public consumption. While the question of too much fuzz may never be satisfactorily answered by researchers, there is no doubt an invisible line in many guitarists’ minds, however distant it might be, where we stop mid-take and say, “This is too much.” Oohlala Manufacturing is one of those companies continuing to toe that line between brilliance and absurdity, pressing forward with plans to cram as much fuzz into a confined space as is humanly possible – all while still sounding good, of course. Their line speaks for itself; boxes like the Soda Meiser can hang with the best of them, smartly transforming classics like the Big Muff and Ampeg’s Scrambler into a house blend of sonic destruction. Designs like the Synth Mangler manage to shoehorn multiple, purposely unstable fuzz circuits into playful packages, strongly making the case that there’s never such a thing as too much fuzz. Regardless, when I received the Ultraviolet, the company’s strongest brew of fuzz, I found myself asking that seminal, existential question over and over again. The Ultraviolet is, for all intents and purposes, a quad-channel fuzz with three active filter sections. And in case that didn’t register, quad means four, as in the Ultraviolet sends your signal through four parallel fuzz channels. Three of these channels are sent through active filter sections to expand the pedal’s range, each one tied to a different section of the frequency spectrum (lining the top of the box and marked as Low Freq, Mid Freq and Hi Freq). You then have the option to blend those sounds back in with the remaining, unfiltered fuzz channel (the Mix knob) for a combination that is downright phat. But it turns out that even though we can put a man on the moon, harnessing four channels of fuzz still remains somewhat elusive. While this pedal is thick and meaty, offering plenty of fuzzed-out muscle for true aficionados, there’s also a lot of complexity hidden inside – both in sound and in construction. Considering that the active filter sections interact to the smallest changes in your rig and playing, not to mention in relation to the other knobs, I found it a bit of a challenge to dial in exact sounds. I rushed things; I over-compensated. For every articulate, layered, harmonically intense fuzz I was able to coax out of the Ultraviolet, I probably encountered another one or two muddy settings, where I just couldn’t find the magic in the knobs. The Filter and Mix knobs can be a little confusing, and definitely take some time to settle into before you capitalize on their unique interplay, mixing the sounds and proportions of the various fuzz channels in the larger tone. The one Fuzz knob, controlling the general level of mayhem, is a bit of disappointment, if only in a psychological sense; for a box billing itself as four fuzzes in one, I’d love to be able to tweak four giant “FUZZ” knobs. That’s the kind of visual, tactile fun Oohlala is known for, and I wish there was more of it here. All that being said, fans of Oohlala know that their designs are made for exploration – a statement made clear in the manual. Part of the fun lies in figuring out just how the damn thing works – that’s why we keep coming back for more. While most pedal geeks twiddle Volume and Gain knobs into submission, Oohlala users are turning banks of controls, manhandling joysticks and generally having a ball. Drop the manual and start turning. Once you “get it,” you’ll be able to extract a maximum number of sounds out of this thing, everything ranging from tinny, lo-fi sounds all the way to fat-assed fuzzes that steamroll everything in their way. The Ultraviolet will best reward those with patience and a sound stuck in their head that they haven’t been able to replicate anywhere else. So how much is too much? If you got all the way to the end of this review and expected an answer, you’re probably the kind of person that loves to be told the answers, and that means the Ultraviolet probably isn’t for you. But if you’re into hands-on learning, hook up with the company doing the cutting-edge research and find out for yourself. Buy if...
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By Jordan Wagner Of all the tonal tools available to guitarists, overdrive pedals are certainly the most common, but the number of choices can be overwhelming. Diversity is a blessing, but it can also be debilitating when making a decision on a purchase. Finding that tube overdrive sound or that fat, blossoming distortion that perfectly congeals with the rest of the rig can sometimes feel like a never-ending task. Enter the Demeter OD-1 Over Drivulator, a very pleasing take on the simple design of the overdrive, with some added versatility to boot. Basically two overdrives in one, the OD-1 gives the guitarist the option of either the tight, responsive tone of light emitting diodes, or the spongy, loose feel and fuzzy sound of Germanium diodes via a Tight-Loose Switch. The circuit is controlled by a set of knob that all guitarists are familiar with: the simple layout of Volume, Tone and Drive. In addition, on the right side of the pedal is a trim pot to control the level of the output amplifier—higher settings boost the sound (which Demeter recommends for the Germanium setting, as it is not quite as loud as the LED mode), and lower settings bring down the output if the pedal is pushing the preamp too hard. With a Fender American Stratocaster into a 1973 Marshall Superbass halfstack, the OD-1 in Tight mode gave a very smooth, sharp tone. Unexpectedly, the sound seemed to have a “layered” quality to it: the distortion seemed to be riding under the natural clean tone of the guitar. It reminded me of that old multitrack technique of mixing some distorted amps with some clean ones. How they accomplished this in a pedal I don’t know, but I found myself playing for over an hour with just this setting. It is that good. Higher drive settings caused the tone to get a little too raspy, so that control was better set to the lower ranges. The Loose setting cut the volume rather noticeably, but that was quickly resolved with a simple turn of the trim pot. Germanium diodes usually provide a rather fuzzy tone on higher drive settings, and the OD-1 did not disappoint. Even with the hot humbuckers in my Flying V, I could still hear every note ring in open chords. The Demeter Over Drivulator is great for anybody looking for a good, crisp-sounding overdrive pedal. The LED diode mode can sound a little harsh when pushed higher, but when backed off the pedal reallyshines. With the addition of the fantastic sounding Germanium mode, the Demeter Over Drivulator just might be the cure to your overdrive blues. Buy if…
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By Michael Ross Based on the overdrive channel of the Jekyll & Hyde and Route 66 pedals, the Route 808 is designed to reproduce the sound of the coveted TS-808 Tube Screamer. I will let vintage fanatics parse how close it comes to the original, but the Route 808 does offer basically the same control panel (Volume, Tone, Drive) plus a Bass Boost, engaged with the mini-toggle. At the extreme CCW setting, Drive added virtually no extra distortion. At full volume this setting gave me a clean boost with a tone control—clean, but not transparent. Like its archetype, the Route 808 evidences the classic Tube Screamer low-mid bump, fattening Strat single-coils and humbucker bridge pickups alike. It also displays a distinct compression component, and cleans up nicely when the guitar volume is reduced, even with a fair amount of drive engaged. At the other end of the Drive spectrum I got a hard rock, if not metal, crunch. In one direction, Tone rolled off enough high end to tame the brightest of rigs, while in the other, it added a Marshall-like edge. Whether you use the bass boost will depend on your situation; at lower volumes it will give you that high volume girth. The 808’s appeal depends on how you feel about Tube Screamers. Proponents will love the extra sustain afforded by its tube-like compression, and the warm coloration of its distinctive voicing. Those looking for a transparent, less compressed and more dynamic pedal will want to look elsewhere. At hundreds less than an original TS-808, and half a hundred less than the reissue, you owe it to yourself to check out the Route 808. Buy if…
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By Michael Ross The Son of Hyde is the exact same distortion sound found in Hyde side of the Jekyll & Hyde pedal. It differs from the Route 808 largely in that it exhibits a British voicing to the more American 808, and sounds less compressed. This pedal also offers more gain, as well as Treble and Mid controls (as opposed to Tone only), and a Bright switch that replaces the overdrive’s Bass Boost. Though labeled a distortion, the Son of Hyde functioned fine as an overdrive in lower gain settings. Set with the Drive at 10 o’clock or below, and the Mid control likewise, the pedal turned into a dynamic, edgy, modern, blues machine that cleaned up nicely when the instrument’s volume was backed off. Goosing the gain and the midrange created some screaming classic sixties tones. With the Drive all the way up and the Mid all the way down, the Son of Hyde implied some modern metal sounds, but it probably doesn’t have enough over-the-top gain or mid-scoop to satisfy one’s inner Slipknot. What Son of Hyde does have is a noise gate that suppresses any hint of hiss when you stop playing, even at the highest, brightest distortion settings. It also produced enough low end to rattle the walls—engaging the Bright switch reduced this a little, leaving just enough bass to re-arrange my internal organs. Hard rockers and mild metal-heads would do well to check out this little monster. Buy if…
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By Gary Guzman Tim Champion originally made guitar pedals for his own use in his Sandpile recording studio in New York City. The guitar pedals are based on his personal favorites that deliver that classic vintage tone, and he is now sharing his creations with guitarists worldwide. Tim Champion Pedals are point to point, hand wired effects that feature vintage PNP Germanium transistors, aluminum casing, true bypass and 9 volt battery operation. The pedals are reminiscent of classic pedals of the past, although Tim has put his own spin on them. The Clapthena is a pedal that adds boost/distortion and more mid-range to your guitar tone. It is similar to a Dallas Rangemaster, which is the treble booster that guitarists such as Brian May and Eric Clapton used on their early recordings. That also explains how the pedal got its name – a combination of Clapton and the name of Tim Champion’s singer, Kathena. It can add a big kick to your lead or rhythm playing when it needs one. I found that this pedal works great with a bit of gain in front of it. If you are playing with a semi-clean tone, you can use it to give your leads a boost if you want more sustain. (Example 1) I also had to try the Clapthena the same way that Brian May used a Rangemaster treble booster. I plugged my Brian May Red Special guitar into the Clapthena, and sent it to my Vox Tonelab with the AC30 amp setting. I got pretty close to the May tone – warm, saturated and fuzzy. (Example 2) The Clapthena is designed to be used with small to medium sized tube amps. It can give you the mid-range boost or brightness that’s missing in your tone. Buy if...
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by Gary Guzman The Tim Champion Fuzzar-o pedal is a fuzz box based on the Tone Bender pedal, used by guitarists such as Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. You only have to worry about two knobs here – Level, which controls the volume and Attack, which attenuates the high end. The tonality is big, harmonically rich fuzz with a fat sound. It’s more like a soft distortion instead of a hi-gain metal in-your-face kind of pedal. Just be prepared to rock with this thing – as it will ultimately overpower and destroy any wimpy new age or smooth jazz tracks! The pedal found itself between my Gibson Firebird and my Fender Deluxe amp, and proceeded to throw some dirt into their relationship. I didn’t feel the need to crank the Level and Attack all the way. With the Level at about 3 o’clock and the Attack at about 2 o’clock, I had plenty of thick distortion to work with. (sound example 1) I also tried different guitars with the Fuzzar-o, and it responds well to either humbuckers or single coil pickups. It definitely gave my Strat a shot of steroids that made it bigger and more threatening! (sound example 2) The Fuzzar-o is versatile enough for the tone to be as warm or as biting as you’d like. It offers warm, thick distortion without being harsh. Buy if...
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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.