Led by highly accomplished, Los Angeles-born, Seattle-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontperson Jessica Dobson, Seattle-based indie rock outfit Deep Sea Diver can trace its origins back to when Dobson was 19: Dobson, who has had stints playing with a who’s who list of contemporary acts, including Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Shins signed with Atlantic Records. And while with Atlantic Records, Dobson wrote and recorded two albums that she wasn’t completely satisfied with. Atlantic Records shelved the material and ultimately dropped her from the label.
After leaving Atlantic, Dobson wrote and recorded her official solo debut EP New Caves under the name Deep Sea Diver. The project expanded to a full-fledged band with the addition of John Raines (bass) Dobson’s spouse Peter Mansen (drums), Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth), who helped to flesh out the project’s sound. The band then went on to release two albums and an EP — 2012’s self-released debut History Speaks, 2014’s Always Waiting EP and 2016’s acclaimed Secrets.
Last October saw the release of the band’s critically applauded third album Impossible Weight through High Beam Records/ATO Records, and the album followed a busy year of touring with Wilco and Joseph. Sonically and thematically, the album stemmed from a period of sometimes brutal self-examination — a process that began for Dobson, not long after Deep Sea Diver finished touring to support Secrets. “We went into the studio pretty quickly after the tour ended, and I sort of hit a wall where I was feeling very detached from making music, and unable to find joy in it,” Dobson recalls in press notes. “I realized I had to try to rediscover my voice as a songwriter, and figure out the vocabulary for what I needed to say on this album.”
Stepping back from music and the studio, Dobson focused on dealing with the depression she had been struggling with, and soon started volunteering for Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for unhoused people, most whom are drug-dependent and frequently engage in street-survival-based sex work. “I spent a lot of time with the women who frequent the Commons, and it taught me a new depth of empathy,” she says. “They’re people who don’t have the luxury of going back to a home at the end of the day and hiding behind those four walls, so they’re sort of forced to be vulnerable with what their needs are. Talking with them and listening to them really freed me up to start writing about things I’d never written about before in my songs.”
Co-produced by Dobson and Andy D. Park and recorded at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice, Impossible Weight finds Dobson and company digging far deeper emotionally than ever before — and pairing it with a bigger, more grandiose sound. While revealing Dobson’s dexterous and powerful guitar work, the album’s lush textures and mercurial arrangements allow room for Dobson to fully demonstrate her vocal range in a way that she hadn’t before. “’I’d never produced a record before and I started out with low expectations for myself, but at some point I realized, ‘I can do this,’” Dobson recalls. “I decided to completely trust my voice and make really bold decisions in all my production calls—just push everything to the absolute outer edges.
For Dobson redefining the limits of her artistry went hand-in-hand with deeper identity issues that came up while Dobson and her bandmates were working on the album. “I was adopted and just recently met my birth mother, and found out that I’m half-Mexican and half-Jewish,” Deep Sea Diver’s frontperson explained in press notes. “Discovering my heritage and learning things about myself that I never knew before really fed into that question of ‘Where do I belong?’” Simultaneously, Dobson rediscovered the sense of possibility, adventure and joy that she first felt when she started out as a 19 year-old. “I think being signed at such a young age messed me up in terms of the expectations I put on myself,” she says. “Somewhere along the way I lost confidence in my own vision, but after making this record I feel a much larger freedom to go in whatever direction I want with my music.”
With Impossible Weight, Dobson hopes that others might reclaim a similar sense of freedom in their emotional lives. “Especially right now when the world is in disarray and there’s so much fear, I want this record to give people room to feel whatever they need to feel,” she says. “I hope it helps them recognize that it’s okay to fall apart, and that they’re meant to let others in instead of trying to work through everything on their own. Because the point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone—that’s why it’s impossible.”
If you were following this site last year — bless you for that, seriously — you may recall that I wrote about a couple of the album’s singles:
- “Lights Out,” a track that contained multitudes, as it was deviant and anthemic yet delicate. Centered around Dobson’s expressive guitar work, a thunderous rhythm section an enormous raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy hook and Dobson’s equally expressive vocals, the song featured a bold and fearlessly vulnerable, who seems to say to the listener “It’s okay to admit that you’re not okay and that you may need some help to get you out of life’s dark places.”
- Album title track “Impossible Weight,” a track that’s one-part New Wave and one-part arena rock with enormous hooks, twinkling synths, Dobson’s expressive and explosive guitar work rooted in heart-fully-on-sleeve songwriting. And while revealing Dobson’s unerring knack for crafting an anthemic hook, the song captures a narrator on the emotional brink with an novelistic attention to psychological detail. A guest spot from Sharon Van Etten, managed to add an additional emotional punch.
Deep Sea Diver is currently on tour to support Impossible Weight. They started the tour with handful of dates opening up for Northwestern indie rock legends Death Cab for Cutie before going on a headlining tour that includes a stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg with Diane Coffee. They’ll head to California for four dates opening for Aussie indie rock act Middle Kids before ending with a sold-out hometown show at Seattle’s The Showbox. Tour dates and ticket information as always will be below.
But in the meantime, Dobson and company teamed up with Damien Jurado for a cover of one of my favorite Alanis Morissette songs “Hand In My Pocket.” Instead of a straightforward cover Deep Sea Diver and Jurado make the song their own by placing the song in a completely different arrangement with the song beginning as a sort of slow-burning lullaby centered around strummed guitar that slowly builds up into some blazing, guitar pyrotechnics before gentle coda.
“One of my favorite things in the world is to cover a larger than life song and try and make it my own,” Deep Sea Diver’s Jessica Dobson says. “Growing up in the 90’s, Alanis was one of the only female artists in the rock world that I had to look up to. I’ve always felt like someone that never finds a home in the middle. ‘Hand In My Pocket’ is a song that so perfectly captured the many juxtapositions in life while making me feel like it was completely fine to be whatever I wanted to be. This cover was recorded in my home studio and I asked Damien Jurado to sing with me on it because I’ve always loved the emotion in his voice. This year marked the 25th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill and I wanted to honor this incredible song and I hope I did it justice. Much love to Alanis!”
TOUR DATES
9/28: Music Hall of Williamsburg – Brooklyn, NY +
9/30: Thunderbird Cafe & Music Hall – Pittsburgh, PA +
10/1: Zanzabar – Louisville, KY +
10/2: Hi-Fi – Indianapolis, IN +
10/3: Live in the Sky at Angad Arts Hotel – St. Louis, MO
10/5: recordBar – Kansas City, MO
10/7: Globe Hall – Denver, CO
10/8: Aggie Theater – Fort Collins, CO
10/9: The State Room – Salt Lake City, UT
10/11: The Independent – San Francisco, CA ^
10/12: Casbah – San Diego CA ^
10/13: Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA (SOLD OUT) ^
10/14: Pappy & Harriet’s – Pioneertown, CA ^
11/12: Showbox – Seattle WA (SOLD OUT) *
+ w/ Diane Coffee
^ w/ Middle Kids
* Mini Trees supports
Ticket information is available here: https://www.thisisdeepseadiver.com/tour
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