Dead Dads Club - Dead Dads Club

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a project titled ‘Dead Dads Club’ would be a little on the gloomy side, but instead, this new work from former Palma Violet Chilli Jesson is a (perhaps unsurprisingly) life-affirming listen. Granted, don’t be entirely fooled; the album is, after all, based around the loss of Chilli’s father to drug addiction when he was younger, so there’s plenty of darkness and soul-searching on show here. But on the whole, his grief and the chaos that ensued (much of which was channelled into the infamous hedonism of his formative band) is transformed into something altogether more cathartic and inspiring. Sonically, too, it’s a record that continues to surprise; moving from the indie swagger of ‘Volatile Child’ to the ominous electro of ‘Humming Wires’ via a tender if scrappy ‘Running Out Of Gas’ (the vocals of which evoke Conor Oberst at his most heartbreaking), the fingerprints of collaborator Carlos O’Connell can be very much felt, with its musicality echoing some of the breadth and expanse of Fontaines’ latest work, if through a more lo-fi lens. By the time that the heady chorus of closing number ‘Need You So Bad’ takes off, it’s imbued with a real sense of healing and closure. Hopefully this is a record that helps Chilli to get that bit closer to achieving as much.