DOSS - 'HOWDYPARTNER'
On a single released a couple of week before Halloween, the horror-movie style sound collage at the beginning of HOWDYPARTNER, coupled with the undoubtedly weird cover artwork, seems to offer an unsettling piece of spooky-season black magic. However as the song progresses, with it’s shifting bassline and cutting social commentary, DOSS reveal something altogether more profound. Theirs is a sardonic approach to the absurdity of existence, something which is altogether more challenging than any jump-scare slasher flick.
With spiky punk rock guitar, minimalist razzy horns, and an intro which takes up two thirds of the song, DOSS show they are certainly not a group to act with any kind of orthodoxy on HOWDYPARTNER. A song which, as the band state themselves, is an observation on life through the lens of Martin Heidegger’s “Thrownness” philosophical framework, was always going to be tumultuous with an undercurrent of intellectualism. The idea that we are thrown into the world with no choice in the matter, and that we must deal with existence as such, is expressed ever-so deftly through DOSS and their genre-splitting style.
Singer Sorley Mackay’s Glaswegian vocal tone is a comfortable fit for this structurally chaotic piece, his words ground HOWDYPARTNER, giving you something to hold on to as the song unfolds. It’s one of those tunes that sounds completely different than it did 20 seconds ago at any given point; it builds to a huge drop as drummer Chilton Fawcett awaits his cue patiently behind the kit, ready to switch from restrained ride cymbal syncopation to heavy rock and roll pounding. The explosion of sound with around a minute left on the runtime finally announces the full melodic scope of HOWDYPARTNER, relieving the tension as the song levels out at cruising altitude. This moment must be utterly electric at their already-famed frenetic live shows. Life may be absurd, but there’s no denying a solid guitar riff.
There’s some wonderfully simple rhyming here which illustrates such a heavy concept in terms easy to understand. Mackay talks of being torn from his mother’s arms, “folorn and filled with scorn” as he observes people who have it all “But still their faces sat with furrows of worry.” These lyrics are right on the surface, and are catchy enough to sit in your mind for days after a couple of listens. While there is a lot of unrest on HOWDYPARTNER, (and a nice little drop of misanthropy), the song is ultimately uplifting, and delivered with pathos. It’s a simple message - You didn’t choose to be alive, so why try to find meaning? Let’s share in our pain and confusion, because “no matter what, you still die scared and alone.”
Words by Adam Davidson
