New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Deep Sea Diver's
Jessica Dobson is the featured artist on the Broken Record podcast today, joining esteemed guests like Bruce Springsteen, Beastie Boys,
Tame Impala and more.
Jessica will also be taking over their Instagram today at 1pm PT / 4pm ET to perform some songs. The release of the episode comes with a new studio video for "Impossible Weight," the Sharon Van Etten-assisted title track from their acclaimed third album (out now via High Beam / ATO). The band will also be re-starting their weekly live stream series, a much-missed item on many fans' calendars. Tune in on Wednesdays at 5pm PT.
Broken Record is far from the only outlet to recognize Impossible Weight since its release. NPR
Music featured it in their New
Music Friday podcast, where they said, "[Dobson] has this sense of confidence across the album... You can really hear her staking out space in the way she sings and the way she puts songs together." Guitar World, Under The Radar, Earmilk, Audiofemme, Analogue.io and more have also praised the album in recent weeks, and fans were able to interact with the band in their recent Reddit AMA.
Jessica has performed onscreen often behind the album, having recently been the subject of a Premier Guitar Rig Rundown, as well as performing in Amoeba Records, Rough Trade and The Current live sessions. The title track also went to #1 in spins on
Sirius XMU the week following the album's release.
Deep Sea Diver pulled out all the stops on the way to release day, from announcing the album with an ingenious video for "
Lights Out" featuring the song's guitar tabs, to enlisting
Sharon Van Etten to sing a stunning guest verse on the album's title track. The latter garnered praise from all corners, with Teen Vogue calling it "an electric guitar-laden rock n' roll dream," and Guitar World noting that "the track's brash, chunky guitar leads to add an otherworldly, gothic touch to this otherwise radio- and even dancefloor-primed slice of indie perfection." Consequence of Sound said that "Dobson's sharp guitar work crunches and buzzes beneath them, serving as another voice altogether," but it was perhaps American Songwriter that put it most succinctly - "In the pantheon of guitarists in the 21st Century, guitarist
Jessica Dobson deserves high placement on that roll call."
Most recently, the band released a fan-sourced video for "Wishing," which featured fans dancing to the track in front of 78 closed-down venue marquees from around the country. The video and its depictions of these closed-down spaces serves as a potent reminder of the plight currently faced by the live music industry.
Following a year featuring tours with
Wilco and Joseph, Deep Sea Diver hardly stayed quiet. In April the band released "Stop Pretending," a single born of their weekly live-streamed performances from their home studio during the initial period of social isolation. The single struck a chord with fans and press alike, even earning a slot on NPR Music's "Favorite Songs of 2020 (So Far)" list.
