When CLASH is patched though to Seattle’s Deep Sea Diver the band are gearing up for the release of their fourth studio album, ‘Billboard Heart‘. The indie rock band comprises primary songwriter, singer, and guitarist Jessica Dobson, her partner, drummer, and co-writer Peter Mansen, and synth player Elliot Jackson. Dobson has also toured and played with some of the most influential cult indie bands of the early 2000s including The Shins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Beck.

‘Billboard Heart’ contains multitudes. In most places, it is exhilarating. ‘Emergency’ is tinged with strident guitar sounds, reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails, whom Dobson cites as an influence. In other places, it’s more gentle. The Elliott Smith-esque track ‘Loose Change’ is comforting, with a fuzzy, melancholic guitar sound. By contrast, it is accompanied by Dobson’s billowing, cathartic vocals. Vocals that coast seamlessly through every track.

There is also a collaboration on ‘Billboard Heart’ with folk-rock songstress Madison Cunningham on the track ‘Let Me Go’. When Dobson saw that Cunningham was playing in town, she reached out and asked her to hang out. This led to an effortless musical synergy when writing and playing guitar together, resulting in a cleansing, standout track.

CLASH sat with Jessica Dobson and discussed everything from the importance of collaborating with other artists, the influences behind ‘Billboard Heart’, and the leisure of touring in the South of France with Beck.

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‘Billboard Heart’ is out this week, how are you feeling about this release?

There are always so many emotions wrapped up in a release. I think, more than ever, I’ve had to grow a thicker skin as everything has been changing in the world and we’re coming out of post- pandemic and social media is crazy. I think I just have to constantly go back to the place of where I was when I made the record and how much I love that process because that’s all that really matters in the end. Then you have no control over how the world receives it. I’m just going to try and keep that pure place. I feel great about it.

You previously said that the song ‘Billboard Heart’ has a theme of letting go of control and how you took inspiration from Tom Petty, how would you describe the overall sound of the album?

I think that it has, I wouldn’t say a lightness because we’re known for being an indie rock band with dreamy elements. We pushed that further on this one in terms of influences. Like you said Tom Petty is a newer influence on this record where I was trying to kind of get at the heart of things quicker. To say things musically a little bit more simply so we could branch out in other areas. I think this record still has rock and dreamy elements, but the guitar playing, the lyrics, everything is a little more exploratory. It feels more alive than any of our other records have. Even in the way they were captured, some of them are demos that we ended up keeping and a lot was not overthought, so it has this kinetic energy.

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Your latest tracks that will feature on the album, ‘Let Me Go’ featuring Madison Cunningham is a very cathartic song, “I wanted more, could you blame me?” What is this single about? How does it further set the tone for the album?

I met Madison a few years back when she released her album ‘Reviewer’ and I heard a few songs on YouTube and I was like, “damn this girl can play and sing and write a really good song”. So, of course, I was fan-girling, girl-crushing, and when she came to town I just asked straight up, “do you want to get some coffee and hang out?” And she was like “absolutely”, so we just had this kind of instantaneous bond. I think we get each other – we’re from the same place, Orange County, it’s in Southern California right by LA. We have the same history, we’re both female songwriters, guitar-players and we’re like sisters now. I love our relationship.

We’ve been trying to write music together for the past couple of years and had some good snippets kind of hanging around in the ether. She was going through a lot on the last trip when she came up and stayed with us, and I was just like “hey, come up and let’s just play music, if anything comes up great, but let’s just hang out and talk about our feelings, how you’re doing.” She was about to leave the next day, but we went to our co-producer Andy’s house. He was like “Do you guys want to record anything?” We were like, “We don’t really have anything.” Then the way the song came about was so natural. I started playing this guitar riff I wrote in high school and Madison was so good at just jumping in. There’s no overthinking or overexplaining, she just starts playing. The song literally came out within 2 hours and almost nothing changed besides we wrote some lyrics for it the next day. But it was quite the surprise that “Let Me Go” came out.

She’s good at what I like to call “mumblecore” which is how a lot of songwriters get lyrics out. You just start mumbling and what’s in your subconscious inevitably will, in some shape or form, come out of your mouth. It might sound really weird to a lot of people at first, but it’s a great way to write lyrics. Eventually ‘Let Me Go’ came out and I loved her melody for that, so we just kind of built the whole song around that feeling of, okay, obviously your feeling constrained by something I can relate to that, not specifically your circumstance, but of course we all have those feelings of being beholden by something. ‘Let Me Go’ was just a natural outpouring of what she was going through and what I could relate to.

It sounds like you have a really nice relationship with Madison, do you find that having relationships with other musicians is beneficial for your own work?

100%. I want more of it because I’m from Los Angeles and when I moved to Seattle it took me a long time to find my roots. I’m always the most alive when I’m playing with other people. Especially when you’re ranging outside of the band as well, I love collaborating within. But you’re going to inevitably, by osmosis, absorb all those things that the people you love and love playing with, it’s going to get into your DNA. I’ve never wanted to be a one-dimensional person, or songwriter, or artist, so I welcome that wholeheartedly.

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For your ‘Shovel’ music video you described it as yourself digging and dancing with a shovel, desperately looking for beauty in dark places. As an artist how do you find beauty in those dark places?

That song is about the surprise of beauty in dark places because I think we tend to shut our eyes and turn away from things that just hurt or feel too uncomfortable. To really allow yourself to fall apart or plummet in the depths of your subconscious of what you’re going through is a very scary thing truly, truly dealing with trauma, all of those things. If you’re doing that, and you’re able to let go of control I find that the resilience that comes from that or if you’re opening up in relationships and being more vulnerable because of it. There are all these benefits that come with the thing that you think is the scariest which is dealing with or looking at those things. So, you relalise that the world is alive and awake, and mother nature will take care of you and all those things, it’s a very mystical song but, yeah there is beauty in darkness.

Did your surroundings affect the album, where were you recording it? Were you in nature, in the city recording? And did it influence the sound?

I had to get away at the very end to finish my lyrics. I went to a cabin, and I got snowed in. I was stuck, and it was kind of the best because I have really strict parameters – no socials, no phone. I am here to be alone and there’s nothing more solitary than being in a cabin in the woods, being snowed out where you can’t leave. That was kind of the last lap of, ‘alright what do I want this record to be? How am I shaping the rest of the songs?

Most of it was in the city, some of it was done in LA, some of it was done at my house. At times I’m sick and tired of being here and I don’t want to record at my studio.Then you have those moments where you can go downstairs if you have an idea and just press record. So, it was a myriad of things but I like that a lot of our music videos are in nature, that’s where I want to be. Feels like open road, this record feels like open road to me.

I know that you mentioned Tom Petty previously as being an influence, are there any other artists you took inspiration from for this record?

Yeah, I definitely got back into my earlier influences. Björk being one of them, I had a post-it on my wall that was like “Don’t forget about Björk” meaning stretch your voice and I love the acrobatics she does. Also some earlier Elliot Smith stuff, songs like ‘Loose Change’ I used to geek out on so much as a little barista in Starbucks in high school, and like ‘Either/Or’, ‘Figure 8’. I just wanted to get back into those roots.

Cate Le Bon is a newer influence. I like the way she does pop music, she feels like she creates a lot of alien landscapes. A lot of Brian Eno feels like that for me too, where I just feel like “this is pop music” and it’s weird and I love it. You know? Like really simple songs that are just so avant-garde, I like that too. Nine Inch Nails came into the picture too, with songs like ‘Shovel’. Nick Cave, just that kind of more angular approach to getting something to feel riveting but immediate.

Yeah, I listened to “Emergency” and that kind of had a Nine Inch Nails vibe to it, but are there any other songs from the album you are particularly excited for people to hear?

Yeah, actually our next single that’s coming out next week, ‘What Do I Know’ was all recorded at my house. I’ve never done a complete song, like engineered everything, so, I’m excited. It’s like I smashed up my favourite Wilco ‘Summerteeth’ pop Kraut-y kind of vibe. I was listening to a lot of The Smile and I just wanted trashy drums. I really love the last song, ‘Happiness is not a Given’ I don’t think I’ve ever written a song like it. Peter and I, my partner and drummer, wrote that together. It just goes to places I don’t think we’ve gone before, I’m excited for people to hear that.

And how do you find working with your partner? Do you sometimes feel like it’s too close to home or do you have your own ways of working together?

We really love to talk about the, in comedy and improv, like the ‘yes and?’ thing where you never say no. You’re always taking someone’s idea and saying yes to it and adding your collaboration or your thoughts to move the idea forward. At our worst, we’re irritated and don’t have good boundaries with how to have a good relationship or a good working relationship, and so there’s a constant flux of how to do that. And there’s no right way. We’ve been together for 15 years, basically our whole adult life and so it’s pretty crazy. Yeah, it’s an ongoing, growing beautiful relationship.

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And you’ve got your American tour coming up quite soon, do you have any favourite venues or cities to play in?

I always love playing in New York. We’re playing at The Music Hall in Williamsburg and it’s just fun to skirt round the city and the energy is unparalleled whenever we’re there. There’s this one venue that I hope we get to play, it’s called Saturn it’s in Birmingham, Alabama, in the south. I think it’s run by people who were in a band and those are the best venues always. Because the green rooms are always like – you can tell an artist designed them because they’ve toured and understand what makes a good backstage, and what makes artists comfortable. This one in particular goes above and beyond. You can stay there, there’s bunk beds, I think there’s like Nintendo games controls, there’s a pool table. It’s kind of like a teenage dream from the 80’s. There’s a full kitchen, totally stocked.

Not every venue is like that, there’s a lot of really shitty, smelly backstage rooms that you have to bring your essential oils and diffuse the hell out of it. In our band, Elliot brings around – we call it ‘the smell box’ he actually makes his own essential oil blends, he has his own company. So, we’ll bring a diffuser, put it in the venue, and then our van never smells, ours smells delightful. It smells like sandalwood and ginger, it’s pretty great.

What songs are you looking forward to people hearing in a live setting?

There’s a song called ‘Tiny Threads’ that I think is one of my favourite songs we’ve ever written. It has this – I was telling someone yesterday, I love a lot of Peter Gabriel songs, they’re so earnest yet they feel so eternal, and you just can’t help but love them. ‘Your Eyes’ would be one of them, ‘Don’t Give Up’ with Kate Bush, I think that’s what it’s called. To me, ‘Tiny Threads’ has this Peter Gabriel-feeling chorus that you could sing forever and not get sick of. It has some of my favourite guitar-influenced moments in it. I love Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth, and just a lot of like – where the guitar comes to the forefront using feedback, just like I would use my voice to convey emotion.

So, it’s almost like this strange morphing of oscillation and feedback, it just like, feels guttural moving inside of me and throughout the production. I’m excited to have no limits of how much we push that song live, whether it goes on for ten minutes, whatever we’re feeling for the night. I think that’s my favourite thing about this upcoming tour, we’re not really going to try and play the songs exactly how they are on the record. We’re really wanting them to bloom and blossom out. And like I said, the record feels like open road, and I want the live show to feel like that too.

Have you ever done that before? Like playing the songs, not as they are on the album, and how was that received?

Well, it’s kind of like a backward one. We got to go on tour with Pearl Jam and play arenas which is just wild. We basically got to road test some of these songs, like ‘Shovel’, ‘Emergency’ and ‘What do I know?’ in arenas which has never happened to us before. Usually we’ll play in a small club and just kind of like, see how it goes, feel the room, like alright we could probably change x,y and z. But in arenas, it’s even a little bit more ballsy to test the song right off. But I

think that some of these songs ended up changing in a way where I was really reacting to them. Like, okay, this felt really good to sing, even in an arena and also in my bedroom, that’s cool.

Then other songs were just like, okay, I think we need to snip the whole chorus and go back to the drawing board. I was able to do that, actually for ‘Emergency.’ We definitely got to do things during the last record where we played a Tiny Desk, and did our own kind of like, David Lynch version of a song called ‘Stop Pretending’ which was like a poppier song, then we changed it into this long, weird red room thing.

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And with a larger back catalogue, has it been tough to choose a setlist for your gigs?

Yeah, it is. And I think it’ll be this ever-morphing thing. I want to have too many songs ready to go because I don’t really want to play the same set every night. You want to get into a groove, but I also want to listen to the room too. Like if a bunch of people are asking for a song that we have played off the new record, or from way back, our first record came out in 2012 so there’s more records now. So yeah, I really want to keep it open.

So you’re saying your first release came out in 2012, what did your music sound like then, how does it differ to now?

I think in the early days it was a little more Talking Heads influenced, which will always stay with me. This is when Vampire Weekend was coming up and we listened to a lot of Grizzly Bear. Radiohead’s always been an influence since I was a little kid. And I think that we’ve kept a lot of the angular guitar stuff, but have also brought in more ballads and kind of left-of-centre, avant-garde, more experimental stuff has continued to sneak in. But I think at its core, it still has the essence of an angular rock band.

What else do you have planned for the year?

We’re coming your way, which is going to be amazing. Hopefully soon, or soon thereafter there will be something announced that I’m really excited about. Because I don’t know how it is that we’ve never – well I know why for the last record, the pandemic happened, and it became hard to get over in general. I’ve been over there with other bands like The Shins and with Beck, and I’m really thrilled to bring my band over and explore the country and get to Europe. I’m veryexcited.

Do you have any European cities that you like to play in?

Berlin is one of my favorites, also Amsterdam. When I was touring with Beck – he tours very leisurely – we got to stay in some castle or winery or something in Bordeaux in southern France. I was like “yes, I will stay in this castle and eat your cheese and drink your wine…!” Deep Sea Diver will probably not be able to stay in a castle in Bordeaux but yeah, I’m very excited to continue to explore.

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Words: Margot Macleod
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez