Jean Dawson - Artist Highlight

Often as an artist develops, they introduce some new sounds and maybe flirt with another genre or two to keep things fresh. The Clash were known for blending everything from Punk to Rockabilly to Reggae and even (on one track) Hip-Hop in most of their releases. Radiohead started blending Electronica and Ambient music with their confidently perfected Alt-Rock after three albums. Even Beyonce and Drake dove headfirst into 90’s House music with their most recent releases. (Sidebar, if anyone can convince me that Drake didn’t record that album in a week because he heard what Bey was doing and wanted to be first, I’ll give you a prize.) Most great artists know where and when to borrow and blend other elements and how to make it work.

For my money, however, there are few artists blending genres with the same level of nuance and flavor currently as Jean Dawson. Though he only has two full length releases (three in October) and a handful of on singles, his confidence and ability to shift genres track to track, and sometimes mid-song, is unparalleled today.

While his first release Bad Sports (2019) was a vibe and had many highlights it wasn’t until his second full release Pixel Bath in 2020 that he really showed out with 13 banger tracks. Here we get flashes of pop-punk, mixed with regular punk mixed with glitchy synthesizers, electronica, chopped (and screwed) up vocals, an out and out Weezer style track and we still had room for a pitch perfect A$AP Rocky feature. Tracks bounce in and out of excitement, angst, anger, mania, and moments of melancholic reflection with such confidence and charisma that makes what could be a chaotic mismatch a revelatory experience. It’s a sound that’s both nostalgic and a vision of the future.

This year Jean has made an appearance on Kilo Kish’s release American Gurl (reviewed here on the Skeleton Groove!) and released the singles ‘Porn Acting*’ and most recently ‘Three Heads*’ which lean into the guitars, heavy drums and lightly distorted vocals bringing a vibe that feels like a perfect progression from the Pixel Bath era. Hopefully, they’ll find themselves surrounded with equally power hungry tracks the Chaos Now* album release in October (keep your eyes peeled for a review around then!) but if Dawson wants to give us an album with all new tracks and let these singles exist on their own, I’d be happy with that as well.

With everything Jean Dawson has done so far in his still blooming career I’m confident in saying that maybe the music world is started to pick up with what Jean is laying down. However, I suspect that by the time everyone else gets on his level, he’ll have already passed onto the next musical plane and everyone will spend the following years catching up. Can’t wait until October!

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