Posts Tagged ‘Dave Dill’

Hooks ‘N’ You: A Look Back at 2008

hooksnyou.jpgIt’s vacation time already? Awesome! Time to kick back, relax, and…oh, wait, I forgot: this is only a part-time writing gig, and I still have to keep doing my full-time writing gig. Oh, well, at least this means I get a bit of a break from going completely insane on Monday afternoons as I try to finish up my column on time (and inevitably fail miserably at it).

Our commander in chief, Mr. Giles, has told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t feel bad about skipping a week here and there with “Hooks ‘N’ You,” since he knows how much I have to do for Bullz-Eye. Thing is, I enjoy writing this column for the same reason all of us here at Popdose offer our contributions to the site: not because we have to, but because we want to. It’s one big ol’ labor of love, folks. Plus, really, where else on the ‘net could I have the flexibility to write a column that spotlights albums ranging from George Burns to Kylie Minogue?

What it’s also given me, however, is the opportunity to have conversations with several of the artists whose records have provided me with a lot of great spins over the years. I realize that the beauty of having a regular column on a website is that people can just click on the appropriate tag and pull up every single one of your previous works, but when I looked back myself, I realized that A) I’ve talked to a lot of great artists since kicking off this column in January ‘08, and B) even *I* got bored clicking through a year’s worth of columns. So for your easy access, here’s a quick list of the folks who were kind enough to talk with me either by phone or E-mail for “Hooks ‘N’ You” in 2008:

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Hooks ‘N’ You: Dave Dill, “Follow the Summer”

Dave Dill

Pity the publicist who offers up an exaggerated sense of their artist’s sound.

I’ve been offering up some semblance of music criticism since I was a senior in high school (Great Bridge HS, class of ‘87, thank you very much), and believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing worse than getting a press release which trumpets an artist as sounding like one thing, only to find upon listening to said artist that, although you can kinda-sorta hear the comparisons that’ve been cited, you’re feeling like a grade-A sucker for falling for a bunch of hype.

Dave Dill’s publicist, however, wisely let other people do the heavy lifting for her, sending out an E-mail which consisted predominantly of a review of Dave’s latest album, Follow the Summer, by Jack Rabid, the man behind The Big Takeover…and what a review it was:

Dave Dill

I seem to be getting a lot of solo guys recording alone this issue, but fortunately there’s talent involved. This is Cranston, RI native Dill’s fifth such LP, and a writer at Absolute Powerpop compared Dill to Brian Wilson, his backing Wondermints, and Jon Brion—three L.A. luminaries that popped into my head (maybe a little Emitt Rhodes post Merry-Go-Round, too). But there’s also tincey bits of the four horsemen, Beatles, Badfinger, Todd Rundgren, and Big Star—if they’d been recording cheery, feel-good, mellow soft-psych pop with Wilson circa 20/20, instead. There’s also three songs, interestingly enough, co-written with Derek Holt of ’70s Brits Climax Blues Band. Dill’s voice, though, reminds of Gerry Rafferty of Steelers’ Wheel and solo, only more harmonies-driven. Very pleasant little disc!

Wow.

I’ve read a lot of reviews in my time, but there have been precious few which have captured my curiosity quite as much as this one. Granted, Jack’s been known to exercise hyperbole on occasion, but he’s also just as capable of dismissing a record with a few withering words. Reading this, therefore, was enough to inspire me to request a copy of the disc, and, man, am I glad that I did. As soon as I slipped Follow the Summer into the CD player, I was smitten…so much so that I proceeded to go buy his preceding two albums immediately thereafter.

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