Artist Watch: Dogwood Last
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Release Title: Time Follows
Genres: Indie Folk, Indie Pop, Electronic Folk
Quick Description: Emotional electronic folk soundscapes that range from delicate to bombastic. Auto-tuned and falsetto vocals guide the production with heartache and hope, supported by an ensemble of equal parts folk and electronic instrumentation.
For Fans of: Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Local Natives
Time is a tricky subject. Too much and life passes you by and you’re stuck looking backwards. Too little and you lack the perspective to move in the right direction. Spending years working on his debut release Time Follows, it would have been easy for New York-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and mastermind behind Dogwood Last Kory Burrell to grow impatient. But he kept chipping away at the project, making progress and eventually releasing a beautiful record full of sorrow and hope.
Time Follows is a journey, full of a range of sounds and emotions. From the rising arc that leads to a dramatic, guitar filled peak of the album’s opener, “Safekeeping” to the intimate, mournful ballad of “Fractured,” the album is at its best when it takes you by surprise.
There’s no sitting still or complacency, each track brings you someplace new. By constantly shifting textures and instrumentation and song structures, Dogwood Last keeps you on your toes. Listening to the lightning fast banjo picking on the opening of “Matriarch,” you are mesmerized by the fluidity and repetition. But it is abruptly interrupted by the revealing lyric, “And I want you to take me down.” It’s a moment that allows you to recalibrate and find new meaning as the journey continues.
The electronic elements work in tandem with the acoustic instruments, connected by the auto-tuned vocals and massive choir of harmonies that adorn many of the album’s biggest moments. Burrell’s vocals amplify every emotion, whether it’s through his thoughtful and revealing lyrics, soaring falsetto, or the wall of voices. He takes what others have done and takes it further in order to advance the story and impact of Dogwood Last.
Lyrically, there are fragments of stories, brief visions of memories painted on a faded canvas, and a heavy heartache that hovers just beneath the surface. “Harbor” contains some of the most anguished lines on the record, but they’re buried under an intentional tidal wave of synthesis and vocoders. Lines like “What's to make if I wake alone, love locked, land locked, loveless” reveal a vulnerability that we’ve felt the entire time. The layers continue to be unpacked the further you dive.
Closing with the title track “Time Follows,” Burrell puts a graceful punctuation point on the narrative. Time doesn’t erase the pain of the past, but there is so much more that we’ve yet to learn, to build, and to love. Do these things and time will follow.
everything now is after then
our love's not lost
but rests in heart
where new begins
in all of these answers left unknown
in all of time that has followed
lies the fallows