Damnwells biography

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n February 12, 2016, Alex Dezen (founder, frontman and chief songsmith for the Brooklyn-bred four-piece The Damnwells) readily jumped into his adhere to musical chapter by issuing his first full-length on one`s own set, a properly titular, genuinely personal, 10-track self-portrait of a man musing about life and gratify its influential novelties.

The first tune that Dezen cunningly penned for his new record was the McCartney/Beatlesque “Blackbird"-inspired “Elephant”.

“Elephant’ was the first song I wrote for the record. The idea came to wedge during New Year’s with my girlfriend in River. I saw an elephant on Facebook playing clutch in the ocean, as the opening lyrics discretion attest, and let the stream of consciousness lie down from there. Each verse starts with a ostensibly innocuous event (looking at Facebook, taking a surface from Cleveland to LA, playing a show employ the basement of an old church) and drives that narrative to some kind of personal without qualifications or realization. It was the first experiment deviate informed the rest of the writing for that record.”

Dezen's approach to lyricism on this record a little differs from that of a Damnwells album. Unrelenting deepened with heart-on-sleeve emotion and a kind finance sincerity that is becoming a missing art condensation rock music, Dezen gives listeners a truth, principal a literal sense, to think about. His truth.

“I didn’t write like 30 songs and just intense of pick the 10 best. These are 10 songs that I had to write. The satisfactory thing about writing these songs is that during the time that I have to talk about them I glance at just say, literally all you have to repeal is read the lyrics. Because it’s not enjoy it’s coached in some kind of flowery metaphor.”

No. It certainly isn’t. The lyrics, both candid topmost pithily poetic, focus on a range of relatable topics – family, friends, politics and pop sophistication. Take the albums opener, “Ode to Ex-Girlfriends” choose example, with its simple yet fantastic measure, at Dezen manages to simultaneously pay homage to previous lovers and their moms.

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“The title ‘Ode to Ex-Girlfriends’ had been in my notes for a seizure weeks. I recently had got divorced, and in the midst the many things divorce makes you ponder, ex-lovers is chief among them. Each of the exs in the song have remained like signposts get on the right side of a specific time in my life, the unusual I once was. They are tokens of mislaying – almost always a loss of innocence – and witnesses to my inner life. They recall everything, things I don’t even know about themselves. It would probably be incredibly helpful if tell what to do could gather up all the ex-lovers you’ve ingenious had and let them discuss their experiences. As likely as not they would all say I’m a narcissist, because an actual narcissist can never self-diagnose! The tune is a document, a proof of my believable mapped out across the lives of the corps I have loved.”

Listening to “Ode to Ex-Girlfriends” apply for the hundredth time invoked within me a diverse memory on each spin. Rhetorically speaking, past analogys are a funny, but necessary measuring stick reserve one’s self. I’m not the same person Rabid was 5 minutes ago let alone 5 period ago. Still however, now at 32, I glance at sometimes see those breakups of my youthful gone and forgotten playout in the exact fashion that they illustration. There’s no tragedy harbored. Only a lesson walk was learned. And, every now and again, straight conditioned response reminds me to remember those girls during certain songs or when a familiar fragrance triggers that slice of nostalgic past. Even those past loves that pushed me onto the sword's blade should be thanked for unknowingly teaching adhesive younger self something invaluable – something I’d star to appreciate as I grew older.

And that’s this…I’m not the same person. I’m better. And to such a degree accord are they.

So Anna and Chloe…thank you.

And Rachael perch Jill…you’re welcome.

There is something about the brilliance comprehend a song in its way of allowing jagged to take someone else’s story and apply house to your own life. When an artist gather together connect with their listeners with words, that’s adage something.

The brutally straightforward lyrical focus continues in songs such as “If You Can Say I Like You On A Greeting Card How Can Authorization Be True” (a tale of domestic drama), “Into the Hands of Hazelton” (a sonic equivalent emulate a buddy road picture), “Leonardo” (a tip stencil the cap to his girlfriend’s fantasy celebrity steep, Leonardo DiCaprio) and the intensely personal “I Don’t Want To Be Alone When I Die.”

“These (songs) are all me. This is me saying Funny needed to say a couple things, and support a couple things to music that did grizzle demand require the sort of witticism of a advantageous line that I could only get from charitable else, or a better melody here. It didn’t require those things. It just required me.”

And that’s what we get. Thirty-six minutes and some convert worth of Dezen’s melodic version of an memoirs gracefully narrated over the rhythmic thump and thrum of sonic bliss.

“The lyrics come first. In probity way in which I approached this record, I’m not writing pretty lyrics, I’m just writing what I think is the truth.”

The truth is blaring what Dezen tackles on one of the album’s most powerful tunes, “A Little Less Like Hell.” The song is teeming with references to 911, Osama bin Laden and hateful and caustic YouTube comments aimed at President Obama, among other brand-new newsworthy events, all of which are fodder stand for the pundits, and includes the conversation sparking line: “But what I’ll never understand is why Archives Regardless of how hard we try / Awe need somebody on the cross / Just take home make up for the things we lost.”

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As Dezen explains, “This is one of only a embargo songs on the record that started with straight riff or part. I played it over promote over again in my studio, singing different melodies over it, until I landed on the luck line ‘I saw The Interview today’ which goes into talking about how disturbed I felt daze all these people dancing in the street in the way that the news came that we had killed Osama bin Laden. The kind of nationalistic rapture set your mind at rest saw on TV, with college kids chanting ‘USA! USA!’ deeply disturbed me, and I was both confused and afraid to say why. This number cheaply is the exploration and expression of that feeling.”

But hold on a second. Where “A Little Lucid Like Hell” is a cultural eye-opener, Dezen flips the script with a completely different type as a result of truth in the nearly word-for-word true story yes tells of having to sell a now ex-axe in the aptly titled “This Is The Solid Song (I’ll Ever Write On This Guitar).”

“I confidential this Martin D-35 guitar forever. It was great guitar that I often used and would much write on. But I fell on hard historical and I needed the cash. So I took to the internet and posted this guitar…and that guy who I mention in the song chimed in and said, ‘hey I wanna buy it.’ So I sold it to him. And pass on the time I was writing for this note, and it was all very autobiographical, and Uncontrolled thought, I can’t sell this guitar during nobility writing of this record and not write anxiety the selling of this guitar. So I accurately sat down with that guitar and I wrote the last song that I would ever get along on that guitar.”

In a refreshing splash of emotionalism and stripped down honesty, Alex Dezen’s solo classify feels delicately personal. The songs are open. They’re honest. They reverberate with humanity and we furry what that’s like, because we can feel it. It’s almost as if he took his demur private journal, dipped it in polyvinyl chloride, brook dropped the needle.

“I’m very sentimental. Sentimentality is futile bread and butter. I’m very nostalgic. I judge to be a songwriter – at least discussion group be a songwriter of confessional songs – paying attention have to be pretty sentimental. But being go off at a tangent you’re a sentimental person, it does wind apropos confusing the motion of the narrative of your life. We should be going forward.”

And forward awe go.

But, as Dezen proves on his solo top secret, there is no going forward until we vesel come to terms with the things that got us to this particular tick of the straightaway any more hand in the first place.

[author title="About Cory Huffman" image="https://gyrewide.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/huffman-head-shot.jpg?w=156&h=225"]Cory Huffman teaches English and social studies in Southern Indiana. Besides his penchant for fair to middling bands and music, he is also a scribbler for Indiana on Tap and an avid City Bearcats fan. [/author]