Dawes is a folk-rock/Americana band from California with six albums to their name so far, and they’re one of my favorites. The band features Taylor Goldsmith as primary songwriter, as well as lead/rhythm guitarist and singer, his brother Griffin on drums, Wylie Gerber on bass, and a number of different members who have occupied other positions within the band. The first time I saw Dawes was almost exactly 10 years ago on an opening run they did for Josh Ritter in May, 2010. I was at back-to-back shows in Manhattan and then Brooklyn, with Ritter supporting So Runs the World Away and Dawes supporting their debut, North Hills, although they were already playing many of the songs that would end up on their follow-up, Nothing Is Wrong. I’ve since seen them near 20 times live and have followed their careers closely. They are a band clearly aware of some sort of legacy, as Taylor has frequently mentioned the type of band they want to be, how he wants a large catalogue of music, and loves putting out music. So, with that legacy in mind, here is the absolute, always-correct, definitive ranking of every one of their songs.
72. “I Will Run”
This Passwords b-side is a slow burner written from the perspective of a dog. They love us, they love living with us, but if given the chance, they will run away. It’s got some nice moments — “I will love you while I’m here” — but it mostly feels like a gimmick song.
71. “Stories Don’t End”
I’ve always struggled with the lyrics to the title track on Dawes’ third album. I kind of understand what they’re going for when Taylor sings, “if you’re telling a story, at some point you stop, but stories don’t end,” but honestly I just feel like he’s wrong. Stories do end, that’s one of the very things that differentiates them from just being life. Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, otherwise it’s not a story. Other than that, the song is a somewhat listless affair, especially coming off a great run of high energy songs.
70. “Rest Easy”
Despite proving fairly prolific by releasing six albums in nine years, Dawes b-sides have been fairly rare. There’s “I Will Run” from Passwords, “All My Failures” and “Strangers Getting Stranger” from the EP Suitcase, and “Rest Easy” from Nothing Is Wrong. It’s not a bad song, but based on these cuts, I think the band generally makes pretty good decisions. “Rest Easy” at the end of their second album could’ve felt like their version of “Good Night” at the end of the White Album: a somber but caring lullaby. It was not to be, and Nothing is Wrong is better off.
69. “Just Beneath the Surface” (reprise)
It can be tough to rank reprises on rock albums: they are building off of a different song but they’re also a different track that is often distinctly different in some way from the original. In this reprise to Stories Don’t End’s opening track, Taylor pulls out the old “those are our songs, hope you liked ‘em,” in the vein of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” or “Exitlude” from The Killers’ second album. It works, but without the context of the original song, does not stand up to most other full-length Dawes songs.
68. “We’re All Gonna Die”
Perhaps the hottest take on this list is this song so close to the bottom. I fully applaud the band stretching themselves in the name of growth, and it has worked multiple times. Dawes is often about beautiful melodies and strictly-written and perfectly worded lyrics. “We’re All Gonna Die” throws both of those things out the window: it’s meandering both in its sound and in its words. Let me add an obligatory “I really do like this song, just less than almost every other song the band has released.”
67. “Time Flies Either Way”
Many of Taylor Goldsmith’s songs are about mortality; the closing song on the most recent album is no exception. The little hints of saxophone in this song are very welcome, as are the playful piano interludes, both helping accentuate the idea that life is short and we need to try our hardest to really slow it down.
66. “I Can’t Love”
Dawes has drawn a lot of comparisons to different 70s rock artists, notably Jackson Browne, CCR, The Byrds, and Neil Young. They never sounded more like the harmonic falsettos of a Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Still, Nash & Young than they do on “I Can’t Love.” The song builds to a great round outro with Griffin in the background and features a typical Dawes-ian twist on simple everyday phrasing with “I can’t love you anymore, than I do right now,” turning what feels like a break-up song into something much lovelier.
65. “Side Effects”
Co-written by former bandmate Blake Mills, “Side Effects” is tucked into Dawes’ third album right before the reprising final track with a few lyrical gems (“The side effects of broken promise becomes a way of getting by”) before the band introduces us to the much more jammy side they would begin to utilize more and more on later albums.
64. “Don’t Send Me Away”
In the right mood—like a packed house on a Saturday night—those jagged, repeating guitar licks can really bring this song to the next level. But in the wrong mood they can feel headache inducing.
63. “Now That It’s Too Late, Maria”
“Now That It’s Too Late, Maria” is too long. Now, I have no problem with the crescendo that this, the final track on 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, builds to. It’s actually the tempo the song is played at that makes it too long for me. Before the studio version was released, the band was playing this song at seemingly twice the speed they ultimately decided to. The quicker version really highlighted the urgency in the lyrics, much better than the ballad it became.
62. “Crack the Case”
Taylor Goldsmith is one of rock music’s best working lyricists, but his attempt at something even remotely political falls flat with “Crack the Case.” It’s basically a “why can’t we all just get along” song in the middle of one of the most turbulent political eras in modern American politics. While some songwriters felt energized by the injustices in the world and rose up to call out hypocrisy, Dawes told us we could just sit down and listen to each other and everything would work out. I believe this lyric from a song on Jason Isbell’s latest album sums it up rather well: “If your words add up to nothing at all, then you’re making a choice to sing a cover when we need a battle cry.”
61. “Stay Down”
“Stay Down” is fun despite its laid back demeanor. It’s a Sunday with absolutely nothing to do where you just have to rest up and get ready for whatever is next in your life.
60. “Telescope”
This is a song about a boy’s relationship, or lack thereof, with his shitty father. It’s a little twist on a rock trope, showing us the other side of that famous ‘open road.’ The chorus, “the stronger the telescope, the more stars there are,” takes on multiple meanings throughout the song, as some of the best Dawes songs do. The more we try to understand, the more there is to understand, meaning the harder it is to actually do so. By the end, it’s also invoking the wide open nature of the music industry nowadays: the easier it is to write and record music, the more people are going to try and do it. Ricky, the song’s main character, is burned by both.
59. “Roll Tide”
“Roll Tide” is a resiliency song. It’s about being down, but harboring enough fire to always come back. Sidenote: I assume that Griffin sings this song because it was not written by Taylor, but I want more Griffin-sung songs, something sorely lacking from Passwords.
58. “My Greatest Invention”
It pains me to have so many Passwords songs so low on the list, but here we are. Part of the problem is that so many of the earlier songs are so great, but a bigger part is that Dawes songs are growers. It’s an essential and a really strong quality to have in a songwriter, even if it means the songs that grow and grow on you sometimes don’t leave the best first impression. It’s been two years since Passwords, but some of them, like this ballad on someone’s expectations vs. reality, still have room to grow.
57. “Quitter”
What a great opening line: “Quit talking to God when your prayers don’t get answered, or if you don’t exactly notice when they do.”
56. “As If By Design”
I always found this an interesting choice for the final song on We’re All Gonna Die. The album breaks from a lot of the archetypes the band had built for themselves over their first four: it’s got harder rocking songs, crunchy guitars, songs to dance to and songs to wilt to, but “As If By Design” is a suddenly jaunty, jazzy version of Dawes. A good song that can feel like somewhat of an outlier on the band’s biggest outlier of an album.
55. “From A Window Seat”
Following the success of their second album and a subsequent tour opening for Mumford & Sons, Dawes came back with a slightly smoother and more colorful sound, introduced immediately on lead single “From A Window Seat.” The song is also packed full of imagery and beautiful turns-of-phrases, but it ultimately still amounts to a writer’s block meta-song, a category that typically has nothing to say other than “I’m trying to write a song right now.”
54. “Strangers Getting Stranger”
A song that certainly wouldn’t have gelled well if included on Nothing Is Wrong, the 2013 album it was cut from, but one that proves even the outtake-iest of Dawes outtakes contains lyrical gems:
“We got doctors that know everything about us
We can level cities by the end of the day
The world is turning back into dust or maybe it’s just
We’re becoming all the god’s that we’ve praised”
53. “Like A Kid”
This is the first appearance of an unreleased song so far, so it’s completely conditional. “Like A Kid” has been played often by the band at live shows and even by Taylor at some solo appearances and on quarantine Instagram Live sessions. Is it an enjoyable romp, full of playful lines and an addicting ba-ba-ba chorus? Yes. Is it maybe too Dawes-ian in its lyrics, bringing a cloying earnestness matched with a sentiment that feels like it was first expressed by a college freshman? Also yes.
52. “I Can’t Think About It Now”
I love so much about “I Can’t Think About It Now”: one of the band’s best guitar solos, some standout couplets. The strange, whispering tone the first few verses are sung in help accentuate the conviction of belting out the later ones, but they are still jarring enough that when I think back on the song, I don’t love it as much as I do 51 other Dawes songs.
51. “To Be Completely Honest”
All Your Favorite Bands at times feels like Dawes at the default sound. It’s not a bad thing—everyone has a default sound that they veer from to add color to their catalogue. It’s often that default that an artist is best at. “To Be Completely Honest” is one of those songs that just feels like exactly what Dawes is. It’s got a chorus whose ending stays the same but is different in the different context of the lyrics leading up to it, it’s got jangling, ‘70s Cali-rock guitars, Taylor’s full-throated singing, and something to say.
50. “Mistakes We Should Have Made”
We are beginning to veer into the territory of “legitimately great songs that just aren’t as great as the others.” “Mistakes We Should Have Made” is one of the best songs from Passwords with a stand-out bridge and a classic rock sound.
49. “Less Than Five Miles Away”
Kind of like the old sitcom clips episode version of a Dawes story-song. It’s a collage of all the things that could be going on, which can be so physically so close to you even if you are in a completely different world than them.
48. “Just Beneath the Surface”
The opening track on Stories Don’t End begins in progress, a build-up that feels like we’re only getting a part of. With as open, honest, and vulnerable as Taylor Goldsmith’s songwriting often is, it can be hard to believe that there’s a secret version of him beneath the one we see, but of course there is. In his case, he’s got a public and artistic persona that is most likely incredibly close to the real him, but it’s not the same. We are all in the same boat, even if there’s no one writing lists about those personas.
47. “All My Failures”
The last of the band’s publicly released b-sides is “All My Failures” from 2012’s Suitcase EP. Unlike some of the other cuts, this song sounds like it belongs right at home on almost any Dawes album. It’s self-deprecating without asking for pity, it’s instrumentation is beautiful and chugging, and it is lyrically as rigid and locked into place as Taylor’s poetry is at its best. Perhaps a little simple, and perhaps there just wasn’t enough room for it on the band’s best album.
46. “None of My Business”
There’s really no telling what this song will sound like once it’s properly recorded, so I’m going mostly based on the lyrics and the few performances it has been given. It’s another Dawes story song, one that seems playful and silly before the turn towards the end with a verse about death:
“On that fateful day when I get buried in the ground
I bet that I could tell you which friends make it into town
He’ll tell you all my dirty secrets and my brother’s gonna sing
Just make sure my suit is pressed and they let me keep my ring
I’m not getting into Heaven and I don’t believe in Hell
I just wanna know what friends and family are remembering me well
But it’s really none of my business, it’s really none of my business”
45. “Take Me Out Of The City”
This ballad from the band’s debut moves forward inch by inch, building itself slowly into a force. Its simple lyrics never feel repetitive and its raggedness on the way up only adds to the charm.
44. “For No Good Reason”
Perhaps the most nihilistic of Dawes songs, “For No Good Reason” is a nice walk in a nice neighborhood on a sunny day where you just can’t shake the feeling that something is a little wrong.
43. “Give Me Time”
Another from the band’s debut, this one really helping to define harmonies as a key part of the band’s sound. “Give Me Time” is a straightforward plea for patience, a patience the song shows it has itself as it slides from verse to verse until Taylor’s final gasp of an “oh!”
42. “Somewhere Along the Way”
One of Dawes’ signature qualities is empathy. Despite the broken and colorful characters that populate the band’s catalogue, there is almost no judgement passed ever. Anger is directed at the world, at higher forces that we can’t control, at oneself, but never at another human being. “Somewhere Along The Way” embodies that central tenet of Dawesomeness as well as any of their other songs; a young woman with big dreams who never quite achieved them is portrayed beautifully here as the hero of her own song, and things end on a high note with a hint of hope for better days to come.
41. “Living in the Future”
With “Living in the Future” kicking off Passwords, you’d be forgiven if you thought it was going to be a true successor to We’re All Gonna Die. The song opens with the same type of grungy guitar filtered through the Dawes sound before slowing down with operatic flourishes and a dirge-like vocals.
40. “Feed the Fire”
Another upbeat one from Passwords, “Feed the Fire” is Taylor’s dealing-with-fame song. Despite his wishes, we hope the fire to continue writing never dies, even if the one to continue seeking approval and attention quells.
39. “When the Tequila Runs Out”
The first single from We’re All Gonna Die telegraphed to fans the changes the album would bring—or at least that there would be changes. What could easily be mistaken for a gimmick party song, it adds some depth to the fun with a third, self-reflective verse that finds its party-goers shaking things off the next morning.
38. “Between the Zero and the One”
Another as-yet-released one, “Between the Zero and the One” has been played live with sparse backing, letting the poetry of the lyrics really shine through:
“It’s not the whisper in your ear
It’s not the banging of the drum
It’s not the person that you were
It’s not the person you’ll become
It’s not where you’re heading to
And it’s not where you’re coming from
The only life you’re gonna live
Is right between the zero and the one”
37. “Picture Of A Man”
Every so often, a Dawes song grapples with masculinity and what our understanding of it is to be a man. With vulnerability and sensitivity, “Picture Of A Man” does it well, accepting that there is a huge spectrum of acceptable manhood, and that being “man enough” isn’t the true test; if you are self-aware enough to wonder then that in itself means you probably don’t have much to worry about.
36. “If You Let Me Be Your Anchor”
The most understanding and peaceful of break-up songs, “If You Let Me Be Your Anchor” lives by the creed that you have to let go of the things you love and leave them free to come back.
35. “My Girl To Me”
Maybe the best bass line in the Dawes catalogue? Also possibly the meanest song Taylor’s ever written, speaking possessively about someone he still loves that has moved on from him.
34. “From the Right Angle”
This song starts and it’s like a warm bath at just the moment you want one. It only gets better from there.
33. “One Of Us”
Sometimes I think that ‘us’ might be the greatest word in the English language; “One Of Us” uses the word and the sentiment behind it to great effect, only helping cement that thought in my mind. Is there anybody anywhere who wouldn’t be overjoyed to be told “You look like one of them, but you talk like one of us?” I know I would be.
32. “Didn’t Fix Me”
It’s getting real risky to keep putting unreleased songs this high on an already stacked list, but I live for the risk. “Didn’t Fix Me” is another song seeking mental health, seeking a way to plug up the hole that craves some sort of creative affirmation, with the eventual epiphany that just because we’re broken doesn’t mean we need to be fixed.
31. “Just My Luck”
One of the only times Taylor’s self-deprecation veers into self-pity. But when self-pity is this well-written it feels worth it.
30. “When You Call My Name”
One of many stand-outs from 2009’s North Hills, “When You Call My Name” is precise in its poetry and euphoric in its performance. Despite its antagonistic nature, describing a break-up, the song again displays the careful humanity given every Dawes character:
“I think you want a world that will hold you
Through security and gravity and love
And I can’t think of anyone who’d blame you
And I can’t think of how that’d be enough”
29. “Never Gonna Say Goodbye”
The best song from Passwords is the most classically Dawes song on there. Written shortly before Taylor’s wedding to Mandy Moore, it’s about masculinity with a rotating chorus of weirdly specific analogies that culminates in a lovely engagement song.
28. “Something in Common”
Another song about wanting to be a better man: “The man who stands in front of you is not the sum of all his dreams, but I’m hoping they’ve got something in common.”
27. “Time Spent In Los Angeles”
It’s low for what may just be the quintessential Dawes rock song: the Jackson Browne in Taylor’s lyricism shines through here as well as anywhere, there’s a big, harmonizing, sing-alongable chorus, and a deep dive into self-reflection that ends with a glimmer of hope inside the dust of human brokenness.
26. “Roll With the Punches”
A song that kicks into high gear right away and helps define the unique sound of We’re All Gonna Die, “Roll With the Punches”—as much a divorce song as it is a break-up song—is about the beating you take with the minutiae and pettiness of a crumbling relationship and how it can numb you to the point you repeat those actions without even thinking about them.
25. “Me Especially”
A coming-of-age song that’s only been played live a handful of times, “Me Especially” is sad and empowering with a cheeky bit of solipsism poured in for good measure.
24. “If I Wanted Someone”
Dipping into ‘straight-up classic’ territory here, “If I Wanted Someone” is more of an indifferent song than either a hate or love song, and as we all know, that’s the worst kind of feeling for someone to have for you. The narrator believes he’s better off alone than with anyone at all, and the ripping guitar with a descending piano line helps underscore the anger in that belief.
23. “Moon in the Water”
A song about understanding the seeming hopelessness of love and still reaching for it anyway. There’s a drive within true romantics that it’s so worth it no matter how far away it seems, or as Joe Jackson put it:
“Fools in love they think they’re heroes
Cause they get to feel more pain
I say fools in love are zeros
I should know
I should know because this fool’s in love again”
22. “Bedside Manner”
I can’t be certain, but I think this was the first song Dawes played the first time I saw them—in an opening slot for Josh Ritter in 2010—so quite possibly my first Dawes song. It’s funny to imagine a young man writing such a reflective, old man song, but nostalgic, wise, and old-at-heart is one of the core precepts of Dawes songs.
21. “Peace in the Valley”
The near-seven minute closer to the band’s debut is about somebody searching for a semblance of contentment. Notably, the song ends and he still has not found it, but there is also no indication that he plans on stopping his search. The battle cry of the solo only improves in live performances.
20. “How Far We’ve Come”
The second-shortest song on any Dawes album (and the shortest original) features rotating vocals between Griffin and Taylor and a very complicated yet somehow most basic way of explaining how time passes.
“Why a mother keeps a record of her child’s height
Why we all are here tonight
Is to see how far we’ve come
The only point of clocks and maps
The only point of looking back
Is to see how far we’ve come”
19. “Someone Will”
I remember seeing Dawes open for Bob Dylan when I was in college — sure it was one of my favorite bands opening for one of the all-time greats, but surely the cranky old Dylan fans wouldn’t give a shit about some young hipster knock-off, so I was wary of the show. But instead, one of the greatest things you can see at a show happened: I watched as the crowd was slowly won over, specifically, verse-by-verse throughout “Someone Will.” The title has a different meaning every time, and in its final iteration, “If you don’t want me after tonight, someone will,” drew outright applause right there in the middle of the song. The audience was rapt for the remainder of the set.
18. “God Rest My Soul”
No Dawes song sounds more like it should be sung by a bard in the Middle Ages than “God Rest My Soul.” The precision in the lyrics seem like they’ve been carved from an ice chunk, having always been there and just needed someone with the right tools to reveal them. “Your time became an old man’s cane while he dances to a song that he forgot.”
17. “Hey Lover”
The only cover song Dawes has ever put on an album was originally written and recorded by former bandmate Blake Mills for his 2010 self-titled album. Why so high for a song the band didn’t even write? The song rolls on like nothing else in their catalogue while somehow sounding exactly like something they would write, we get another rotating vocals song, plus the many lyrical gems featuring words and phrases we’d never get otherwise: “I want to raise with you a watch our younglings hatch, fucking make the first letter of their first names match,” “I may be white but I don’t like my people much,” “I’m back into the boring life that I once led stuffing white spread asshole on a sofa bed.”
16. “St. Augustine At Night”
This one could come back to bite me, but for now, I stand by it. Every version of “St. Augustine At Night” is gorgeous and I can’t imagine an album version—especially if it’s on the upcoming Dave Cobb-produced album—not carrying that over. Perhaps I’m biased, as someone who worked menial minimum wage jobs in a tourist destination, but “St. Augustine At Night” just hits all the right notes for me in a way that no Dawes song has since at least 2015.
“This town was the one thing that felt right
All these tourists could be kings during the day
But not in St. Augustine at night”
And
“The Lord must really love us common folk
Cause he made so Goddamn much
Now you just point the way to go
If you could just start speaking up”
15. “Coming Back To A Man”
Being “caught between the plans and the dreams so that neither end up turning out right” is as relatable a notion as I’ve ever heard in a song. This is one of Taylor’s earliest stabs at his definition of adulthood, something he would nail later on but never in quite the same synthesis of naivety and false confidence as he did here.
14. “Bear Witness”
Another old man song, “Bear Witness” brings a lovely sweetness throughout that only turns sour through the lens of a dying narrator.
13. “My Way Back Home”
A song that advocates for trying your darndest to understand the world while also containing the very best solo on any Dawes song, a searing guitar that makes a six-and-a-half minute song feel like half that.
12. “Things Happen”
One of the earliest examples of the atheistic nature of Taylor’s writing, and a great example of how that can still be quite optimistic.
11. “The Way You Laugh”
A great, rollicking guitar-driven song nestled between two of the band’s greatest downbeat tunes at the tail end of Nothing Is Wrong. Also one of the only Dawes songs where the title only appears once within the song.
10. “Love Is All I Am”
Another of the defining songs of the band’s early sound. A stripped down, almost acapella ode to love, it was this song’s harmonies that truly caught the attention of the audience, my friends, and myself the very first time we stumbled upon a Dawes show.
9. “All Your Favorite Bands”
A song that is so passionate in its earnestness that it absolutely forces you to overlook all of its cheesiness. It’s something that usually happens more with someone like Meat Loaf or on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the commitment to camp somehow transcends itself and creates a force to be reckoned with. A hymnal for and by music lovers that deserves every sing-along it’s ever earned.
8. “Right On Time”
It’s shocking to me that it took four albums for “Right On Time.” It’s a song that sounds like it’s always been a Dawes song, just floating out there in the ether waiting for the band to get together and write it down.
7. “Million Dollar Bill”
A song about so badly wanting to continue contributing to someone’s happiness that you’ll do anything, even if it goes unseen and if it’s effect is unknowable. It’s this grace in the face of such pain that helps make Dawes so endearing in the first place.
6. “Fire Away”
“Fire Away” comes crashing into your consciousness, forcing you to pay attention to the poise its narrator displays in allowing himself to be whatever someone needs him to be. It all crescendos with a huge back and forth between the Goldsmith brothers and a ripping guitar solo.
5. “That Western Skyline”
The first song from the first album is a story about a young man who moves from California to Birmingham, Alabama for a woman. Things don’t work out and he ends up having to leave. It’s a simple and quick story, and yet, through the exacting lyrics and the slow, clean perfection of the band behind them, it feels universal, almost mythic.
4. “Most People”
There’s no better-written chorus in any Dawes song than the one in “Most People”:
“She thinks most people don’t talk enough about how lucky they are
Most people don’t know what it takes for me to get through the day
Most people don’t talk enough about the love in their hearts
But she doesn’t know most people feel that same way”
3. “So Well”
“So Well” revolves around one character from the point of view of three different men in her life. Despite their collective infatuation with her, they never really fully know her the way that they wish to, and yet she has a light that helps them feel like the world is going to be ok anyway. Whether or not Marie truly believes that nothing is wrong is up to how the listener views the world.
2. “A Little Bit Of Everything”
“A Little Bit Of Everything” is the pinnacle of a very typical category of Dawes songs: three stories that each change the chorus a little bit and culminate in a whirlwind of images and depth. This one here is about life itself, love, the world and the way it works, it’s about everything. Or at least a little bit of it.
1. “When My Time Comes”
It can be hard to imagine there’s a song better than “A Little Bit Of Everything,” but anyone who’s ever seen Dawes perform “When My Time Comes” in front of a sold out crowd knows this was always going to be the answer. It’s philosophical, it’s contemplative, it’s about death, it’s about doubt, and it is roared with as much power as the human lungs can muster—if it’s not, then you’re doing it wrong.
Images via Dawestheband.com