Review Summary: Will I make it through you?
Dowsing have busy throughout their short-lived career thus far as musicians. This Chicago based quintet has released a slew of splits and their own ep as well as releasing two full length records in as many years. With their 2012 full length debut on Count Your Lucky Stars Records, It’s Still Pretty Terrible, Dowsing burst onto the emo/indie scene, in the vein of label mates such as Joie De Vivre and Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate). Now, not even a year later, Dowsing have put forth
I Don’t Even Care Anymore, an album that, while deviating slightly from past releases, is still a welcome addition to a growing discography of a young talented band.
I Don’t Even Care Anymore is a short record in every sense of the term. There are only ten tracks and of these ten tracks, only two manage to be longer than three minutes. While this may cause some to jump on the “rushed album” bandwagon, I wholeheartedly disagree. Admittedly, there is an obvious lack of material on a this full length, which is nearly identical in length to their first record. Too often bands who egregiously throw themselves into the “emo” genre suffer from over bloated songwriting and pretentious lyricism. Dowsing is an emo band devoid of the ostentatious nature flooding the genre, instead opting for “Feel Good Sad Jams” (as the band lightheartedly describes themselves). Album opener “If I Fall Asleep The Cats Will Find Me” is surprisingly dark and moody, seemingly becoming an outlier as the rest of the album progresses. With a simple relative lead and ominous vocals, this track’s depresses listeners both musically and lyrically. The rest of the record finds Lead singer Erik Hunter Czaja (with support from the four other members, as each band member shares vocal responsibilities) elegizing solemnly over winding guitars, sparkling keyboards and surprisingly prominent bass lines, a juxtaposition that is prevalent on nearly every track. This juxtaposition is nowhere more palpable than title track “I Don’t Even Care Anymore”, with soaring instrumentation backing ruminations on losing someone close, and accepting their departure.
Although
I Don’t Even Care Anymore is not anything novel or innovative in a scene that has been so tirelessly warped over the past decade, this record is still an interesting listen. The fact that tracks err on the short side rather than drone endless on, makes this record, if anything, entirely palatable upon first listen, beginning to end. While the songs focus nearly entirely on lost love and subsequent alcohol abuse and often find themselves sounding dangerously similar to previous tracks, Dowsing has apparently found a formula to stick to, a formula that is unfortunately already showing signs of wearing thin.
