First Listen: Dawes, 'Passwords'
Dawes returns once again to its greatest specialty: smooth and ingratiating California folk-rock that never bothers to hide its big, beating, bleeding heart.
On the surface, ' songs are bright, approachable, outward-facing throwbacks to the best in classic countrified rock, from to . Its songs often register as comfort food; as the stuff in the summertime or barroom blowouts that can barely be contained by closing time. But singer Taylor Goldsmith also uses Dawes as a canvas for serious, sometimes enormously ambitious ruminations on the meaning of life and the myriad ways human beings find love, hope and meaning.
