There’s a palpable energy that crackles beneath Dakota Floyd’s music. It’s the sort of visceral, tangible spiritedness that you can’t fake live or engineer in a studio. The Wild, the beloved folk-punk group where Floyd spent years cutting his teeth, had it in spades, so maybe it’s no surprise that he’s been able to funnel so much of that verve and vivacity into his solo debut, Localities.
Or maybe it’s a question of restlessness and pent-up artistry. After all, Floyd has been playing solo shows for a decade now, but has never made the time to record any of his songs. It’s been something that’s been eating at him for quite some time, so last November he decided that—one way or another—these songs were going to come out. Within days he called up a friend with a studio in Bloomington, Indiana, made the drive north, and five or six hours later, he had a record—albeit a very naked and minimal one.
“When recording these songs, we had a couple of options,” Floyd tells Immersive. “To really fill them out with a full band or to leave them stripped down. We chose the latter. While it would’ve been cool to have these songs recorded with a bunch of instruments and parts, it would’ve felt strange for that to be my first solo release. Basically, this record was made to sound just like I do live, because that’s pretty much how we recorded it. We set up two mics—one on the guitar and one on my vocals—and took a few takes of each song.”
Listening to lead single “Highway Lines,” you can hear a raw sense of urgency and vulnerability that echoes throughout the record. Although it’s an acoustic track, there’s an underlying aggression that punctuates Floyd’s playing as if he’s half-expecting drums and bass to come crashing into the track. At times it feels skeletal, like the first faint sketches of a song, and if you close your eyes you can hear the chorus exploding in your head. And it’s precisely that tension, the one between his unadorned approach and the combustive energy that he throws into his performance, that makes his music sound so vital. There are stumbles, cracks, and fissures aplenty, but they never distract you from the effusive essence of his songwriting.
“Because of the way we recorded Localities, there are definitely flaws and some spots that don’t sound as perfect as most solo-acoustic-guitar-guy recordings would, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Floyd says. “The flaws are real, and I wanted to paint a very true and accurate representation of my music when making this record.”
Listen to “Highway Lines” below.
Localities is out Apr. 1 and will be available via Bandcamp.
Dakota Floyd will celebrate the release of Localities tomorrow night, Apr. 1, at WonderRoot. Supporting him will be Jeremy Ray, TRAGWAG, Witt Wisebram (The Wild), and Yancey Ballard. Doors open at 8 p.m. Admission is $5.
More Info
Bandcamp: dakotafloyd.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @dakotafloydmusic
Twitter: @dakotafloyd