5. Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong
They are an American band and are not as well known as they should be, partly because they are hard to describe. They are sort of singer songwriter, folky, country rock. I would see him as a sort of Paul Simon character, really, as a songwriter. You know when an artist isn’t particularly bothered about following one musical direction or genre and is just trying to stand the songs up? I suppose a bit like I’ve done, really, I don’t think it is particularly easy to get across what genre I am – I don’t fit into rock and I don’t fit into pop. He is a bit like that. He has a bit of everything in his songwriting.
Three songs stand out of a really strong album. ‘Time Spent In Los Angeles’ is nice, ‘Million Dollar Bill’ is a brilliant song and the best on the album is called ‘A Little Bit Of Everything’. I couldn’t work out what he was on about – it starts with a policeman trying to talk a suicidal person down from a bridge and it goes into the different characters. He builds a clever picture up and he is a brilliant singer.
You know how Paul Simon dips into pop and dips into a bit of African music and lets the influences come in and sway the record? It is a bit like that. They are a beautiful band. They are one of the few where I still buy all their albums. They have had a Top Five in my charts and a Top Ten. In my iTunes, you get five stars if you are a No.1 in my monthly charts, when you are Top 5 you get four stars and Top Ten three stars, Top 15 two stars and if you have been in the Top 20 you get one star. That is how I put them into my system. It is a nice system! It shows me straight away that Dawes have had three No.1s and five Top 5s, and several in the top 20 of the monthly charts I do in my book. I’ve done this on iTunes as well since 2004.
