Album Review: "All Your Favorite Bands" by Dawes

Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes

For me, love for a new Dawes album isn’t always at first sight. I can never put on their record and listen to it spin a couple times and decide that it’s solid material. I’ve found that, with all four of the band’s albums under their current name, it has been a slow build to a feeling of intensity about their work. It’s like how most serious relationships aren’t founded on a sexy haircut or a witty line; it takes time and effort, but it builds into something lasting.

            Each first listen to each of their albums has left me thinking wistfully of the previous album, or, in the case of North Hills, wishing every song could be as good as “When My Time Comes.” But something keeps bringing me back, and eventually I get to the point I was at a little while ago, where I flipped through playlists on my iPod and noticed that most queues had seven or eight Dawes songs – and all from different albums. The more I listen, the more I find things I love about each song, the more I come to appreciate what must’ve gone into the making of the album. And that, in my opinion, is the sign of a great piece of work.

            Steeling open on All Your Favorite Bands is the track “Things Happen,” which you might be surprised is actually a new song. The easy snare, coupled with lyrics like “…an honest signature/on a fake ID” screams vintage Dawes.

            Later comes the title track, which speaks volumes as to where Taylor’s mind is at these days. A lot of his songs are about lost lovers or fraught love; this is more like a pleasant remembrance of something nice; a clear-cutting piano drives the rhythm and the nostalgic lyrics describe a previous lover who has popped into his head, even though he “[hasn’t] seen [them] in there for so long.” It suggests the singer has gained a new kind of clarity on life.

            I got spoiled with the last track, “Now That it’s Too Late, Maria.” I was shown a live clip of it on YouTube weeks before the album came out, and live it’s an upbeat, hard-hitting, almost vindictive anthem that really moves. I love a song that makes me want to run when I’m walking down the street, so I was a little disappointed when I turned on the album and “Maria” ended up being slow, deliberate, and soft. It’s not quite as powerful and feels too melancholic. 

            The album has definitely moved to the front of my Play Next queue. We’ll have to see if songs like “All Your Favorite Bands” will have the same staying power as “A Little Bit of Everything,” “Million Dollar Bill,” and “The Way That You Laugh.” Even if it doesn’t, All Your Favorite Bands is as solid an album as one could expect from Dawes, and the band continues to give me reason to rank them as one of the top artists out there.