The Dip Delivers

My dear friend Will introduced me to one his favorite bands about a month ago, The Dip. While I sat on the couch in his living room, he turned on his record player, set the vinyl, dropped the needle and the music began. There’s a certain spunk to the music that you immediately notice; it has a modern-vibe with relevant lyrics but includes instrumentals that you would find on an old-school blues album. The perfect mix of these components completed an album that I have come to love so much over the past month: The Dip Delivers.

I will note that the first time I heard this album, we were all pretty stoned and music is always a totally different ballgame when you’re high. My friend Jac and I, who were both listening to this album for the first time, were dying laughing as we decided that “Sure Don’t Miss You” would be the perfect track to end our action movie. She and I sat there, listening to the music and planning out the entire storyline to our debut film. We decided that it would start out with both of us escaping Will and going off with each other, with most of the movie consisting of our adventures over the years. It ends with Will coming back years later and killing both of us in an intense car wreck scene, while of course, Sure Don’t Miss You is playing during the final scene. I think about this now and laugh at the absurdity, but it all came from listening to the first track on The Dip Delivers (and, to be fair, the weed).

I listened to the album again the next day and didn’t lose any of the love that I felt for it when I first heard it. The seven-man ensemble strings together songs that are well-thought out both instrumentally and lyrically. There are few albums that I thoroughly and completely enjoy as much as this one. Each song is entirely different from the one before, but this does not make the album any less cohesive. While “Sure Don’t Miss You” opens up the record with an upbeat, “screw-you” attitude, “Adeline” comes in as a slower, soulful love ballad. This record doesn’t have one solid theme throughout; it’s not all about love, nor is it all about yearning, forgetting the past, or leaving behind the people who did you wrong, like many albums are nowadays. The Dip leaves behind the idea that an album has to revolve around one idea, instead shifting their focus to creating individual songs with separate meanings that are somehow able to be strung together in a way that completely pulls the listener in from start to finish.

Going through a rough patch in my life, the song that stuck out to me most on this album was “Atlas”. The chorus revolves around the line, “don’t put the world on your shoulders, cuz you know, it ain’t your load to bear”. Tom Eddy’s deep, soothing voice resonates to no end with me; when it’s combined with meaningful yet non-cliché lyrics and the talented instrumentals from all of the members, an amazingly complete song is created. It’s hard to listen to this song, or this album as a whole, and not sing along, trying (and personally, failing) to match the smooth voice of Eddy. While I don’t have the insanely talented vocal cords that Eddy does, I can’t help but feel good when singing along with him. I can’t say it enough: this album has become a classic for me that I’m sure I will turn back to for years to come.