Dodging Dues

Beginning with their 2018 album Cosmic Cash, New Jersey sextet Garcia Peoples kicked off an exciting and prolific run of releases, their quickly evolving sound changing significantly with each subsequent chapter. They emerged as a new kind of jam band, one influenced as much by the blazing improvisation of legends like the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers Band as they were the songwriting chops of indie acts like Yo La Tengo or Wilco, finding an intersection of these musical spheres that was a sound unto itself. In just a few years, the band grew over the course of multiple studio albums and live documents, exploring long-form Krautrock-informed saxophone sprawl on 2019s One Step Behind and more streamlined psychedelic rock on the next years Nightcap at Wits End. Dodging Dues stretches out in different directions yet again, with a reshuffling of personnel duties and new angles on production from Matt Sweeney. The record consists of just seven relatively brief songs, but Garcia Peoples cover a lot of ground in that small space. Opening track "False Company" is a slow, driving boogie that borders on hard rock, complete with fantastical vocal harmonies and deep-fried dual guitar leads. From there, the band kicks into a trio of songs that flows unbrokenly from "Cold Dice" to the drifting-yet-epic album highlight "Tough Freaks," an anthem to living life outside of societal norms, culminating in the screaming guitar solo that ends "Stray Cats." Unlike earlier albums, where Tom Malach, Danny Arakaki, and Derek Spaldo handled most of the singing and songwriting, newer members bassist Andy Cush and keyboard player Pat Gubler add their songwriting and vocal talents to the mix this time around. Sweeneys production also enhances the overall sonic architecture of Dodging Dues, with little details like auxiliary percussion, extra layers of vocals, or gliding steel guitar slides peeking out in the mix and sweetening the sound. Like many Garcia Peoples records, a lot of consideration goes into the flow of the songs. The yawning and mellow "Here We Are," the only track here that stretches beyond the five-minute mark, sits right in the center of the album. It serves as an anchor for the groups wilder numbers, amping back up to bookend the set with one more rocker on final song "Fill Your Cup." The diversity of the songwriting and attentive production make Dodging Dues one of the more ambitious and well-groomed outings in the Garcia Peoples catalog. Like much of their other work, however, it serves mainly as a snapshot of where the band is at in an exact moment, a place theyll be certain to have moved on from by the time their next idea begins to take shape. ~ Fred Thomas