Going Nowhere - Album Review
By Manuel A. Melendez
How do we wrangle with loss or the breaking apart of something? Dawson Gentleman asks this question over and over in his debut album, Going Nowhere, enacting the circle of the drain that refuses to ever dive into it while dwelling beautifully in the emotive catharsis of the music and the lyrics he weaves in and out of this obsessive gem. As if writing his lyrics wasn’t enough, Gentleman also plays every instrument heard on the album. Having the pleasure of seeing Gentleman live a few times now, it doesn’t surprise me that he brings the same desire for distortion and looping in a live performance to the album’s production, giving way to clarity and effusive passion with his earnest vocals on the first track, “Insomnia.”
As a ‘90s kid, it’s impossible not to think of Pearl Jam or The Smashing Pumpkins (or Soundgarden) as Gentleman shifts from a sad, sultry baritone to a warm, inviting tenor that distills both the rage and the yearning that still lives fervently between the chords. Gentleman’s fun use of vocal filters in this opener (and throughout the album) doesn’t dissuade me from hearing how Vedder, Corgan, and Cornell influence the pain and joy of his vocals, each new inflection or tone a wonderful recrafting of the emotional work in the song that also acts as a lovely ode to the music Gentleman finds continued inspiration in. His lyrics are also punctuated with genuine pathos, as with my favorite line, “I’ve given you all of me / but I never got any of you,” delivered without any emphasis or campiness and made all the more heartbreaking for how it encapsulates the banality that comes at the end of a relationship and the vacuum it leaves in this wake.
Gentleman is a savvy artist, though, and the second track, “Bugs,” doesn’t linger on the same melancholy that “Insomnia” does, opting for a Cobain-esque stab at cautious optimism, presenting lyrics like “If the sun doesn’t rise in the morning / Let’s enjoy what we have today” while once more paying homage to a vocalist and musician (Cobain) that has clearly marked Gentleman’s musical path without ever devolving into cliche or poser ode. Gentleman loves music, and he studies it fervently, as the tracks on this album put on display. The drums, in particular, often front and center in the mix, are exceptionally crisp on track five, “Dirty House,” my favorite track on the album, and which features one of Gentleman’s most distinctive vocal deliveries, especially in the chorus, where he lets the vowels of his chorus, “Let the water pour out / I’d like the rain to wash over me / You let the fire burn out / We only know what we wanna believe,” (also my favorite set of lyrics on the album) cast an uncanny spell over the listener as he weaves them up and down his vocal cords. For me, this chorus is the closest Gentleman comes to capturing the genuine textures of that ambivalent center when we are caught between the end of something and the fresh start on the horizon.
This album isn’t meant as a simple showcase of Gentleman’s musical versatility or taste, but through both, he attacks each track until they are stripped of everything but the nakedness of the feeling from which they emerged. Track six, “Waste Me,” the liveliest with anger and the most dissonant, ends with Gentleman screaming into the mic. Yet, the final track, “Wake Up,” a lovely acoustic lament, encapsulates the vivid juxtaposition where the album lives– “going nowhere” may be a damning or a cry for help, but it is also moving and actionable– it is not a full stop. As the echo of Gentleman’s voice gradually comes back to the center at the end of “Wake Up,” the drums and guitar present just seconds before fade away– leaving nothing but his voice holding the final note as a wail for the listener to hold onto.
At seven songs, this album leaves the listener starved for more, which seems fitting for a debut release, and, perhaps unknowingly, speaks to that often forgotten music culture of the ‘80s and ‘90s when albums didn’t need to be twelve or twenty-seven tracks long to make a point– to land on a truth that could also be a musical bolt– a jolt that announces a new artist without calling attention to itself but that does so all the same. The sparseness of the album also means Gentleman doesn’t waste any time, each of the tracks a vital continuation of the story he tells– that of a young man torn but unshackled, wistful but determined, recovering and empowered– it’s as much a breakup album as it is a musical totem of what humans do and do so well when we tune in to their frequencies: lend out a hand to remind us, once more, that we are not surviving this life alone.
Rest assured– the album may be titled Going Nowhere, but Dawson Gentleman is heading toward anywhere but.
Going Nowhere is available to stream on Spotify.
Check out this YouTube video where Dawson Gentleman briefly talks about how this album came to be: 2/1/25