Track By Track: Elliott Dawson's New Album 'Certain Death'

Heralded by the spine-tingling avant-rock melodrama of lead singles 'Calling Time', 'Speaking Frankly' and 'Certain Death', Elliott Dawson's second solo album Certain Death has arrived. Recorded with producer James Goldsmith and featuring a tight-knit team of sonic contributors, we invited the Te Whanganui-a-Tara songwriter / composer to unpack each individual track on the record — you can nab the limited pink vinyl edition HERE...

Elliott Dawson's Certain Death Album Tour
Saturday 26th April - Whammy Bar, Auckland*
Thursday 1st May - San Fran, Wellington
*Auckland tickets on sale HERE via UTR (Rock Tier options available)

Hamilton Central Station

This song / quasi-intro is about my mixed feelings on growing up in the thriving metropolis of Kirikiriroa Hamilton. It’s also kind of my ‘we could have had it all’ Anthonie Tonnon moment on regional passenger rail. There’s an abandoned underground train station in central Hamilton that they literally built a Warehouse on top of. The thing about growing up in Hamilton was that there was no real music scene unless you’re into hardcore / metal and you can’t go anywhere without a car. I often think about what I could’ve done if I could have caught a train up to Tāmaki during high school to meet people and play shows. A lot of this record is kind of my peace-making process with the missed opportunities of the first 25 years of life. It wasn’t complete without something touching on the sense of geographical restriction in the early days to mirror what I feel now.

Quarter Life

Someone told me this song sounds like if Scott Walker and Tool had a baby. I disagree. I was listening to a lot of Yves Tumor’s 'Heaven To a Tortured Mind' in the process of writing this record and was kind of more what I was going for. I didn’t have an actual crisis per se, but was really paralysed by a sense of ‘what now?’ after finishing uni. I think the auto-tune of it all started as one of those things that was ironic and funny but after a while became serious. We re-did the drums on this song three times. My band still calls this song the bing-bong song because of the saxophone part in the intro.

You Made Me

This is one of those songs that sounds like it's about someone else, but is really just my internal monologue of me talking to myself. One of my favourite meme formats is the one where it's like, "how did I get here? My brother in Christ you arrived behind the wheel of a large automobile.” This song is just a serious version of that meme. Sometimes you’ve just gotta remind yourself that you and your choices are in fact largely responsible for your own fortune / misfortune. The back end of this song is one of my favourite parts of the album and is a great example of James (Goldsmith) and I mashing together our own reference points. I stole the beat from an early Kaytranada track and James had the idea of having Harry (Scholes) play double bass instead of electric. Now it sounds way more like I’m referencing Photek and Thom Yorke solo era than badly trying to mash in a hip hop outro because I can’t write a C section riff.

Speaking Frankly

This song was really hard to finish and I think was the second one I wrote that made it onto the record. Have been playing it in different versions since before Hang Low came out. It’s about how good I am at holding a grudge. Forgiveness is not for me. Maybe in the next 25 years. There’s a few production choices on this one that I’m still a little self-conscious about but am very happy we managed to finish it and put it out.

Going Nowhere

This song is about the first time I worked in an office. I became dramatically hopeless about anything and everything within about two weeks. It’s also one of the songs I wrote before Hang Low came out and so it has the odd-time thing that I was obsessed with back then. Producing this one was really about bringing it into the new era and I’m very stoked about where it landed. Even though the chorus is real simple, I think the bridge is one of the best things I’ve ever written in a complete sense. Shout out to Elizabeth Hocking on the tenor saxophone solo also.

It’s Not Enough

This song has gone through so many different versions and names. Definitely the oldest song on the record, because I remember bringing it to DOONS in like maybe 2019 back when it was still trying to badly impersonate Young The Giant. Originally it was more of a love song and I have no idea how it landed here. I knew there was a song in this particular chord progression but I couldn’t tie down the reference point. I kind of have to have a mid-album downtempo track and this is it.

Hard Earned Thirst

This one is about how my mum’s side of the family came to Aotearoa from Scotland and is me asking myself if I’m trapped by how they lived their lives. Not to go too deep on the family history, but the men on that side of the family haven’t really been that nice people. I’m also a thot for Marlins Dreaming and this is my best impersonation of a moist Tuesday in Dunedin. James put some bongos in this song without telling me and I’ll send a free record to the first person who reads this and can tell me where they are. I also wanted to put a stupid guitar solo somewhere on this album and so that’s what I did.

I Don’t Want to Have to Ask the Question

Another one which took a lot out of me to finish. I honestly couldn’t tell you with any certainty what it’s about, but I remember a rather heated conversation with James (MacEwan) who played all the trumpet parts on this album at an afters. We were arguing about what the point of making music was and our how our relationships with music change over time as musicians. Most of what I make music for is to have the feeling when you don’t have to perceive your own mortality even if only for a moment. I really had to renegotiate that relationship to make this album and for that reason alone this song was originally going to be the title track. Bianca (Bailey) looked at me funny when I said I was thinking about having a nine word album title and then suggested Certain Death.

Calling Time

This is a song about me being sad that all my friends left Pōneke. It’s also a bit of closure for me on previous projects that probably weren’t as good as I thought they were at the time. I also just love Ableton arpeggiators and this whole song came out of that one part. Feels like this song has a lot to say but it’s also just me saying I miss my friends and the era where everyone I loved was within walking distance. You blink and it’s gone.

Trauma Porn

This song works really well at the end of the album because it sounds like a sitcom credits track to me. There was a point in time where I was working on some fairly hectic stuff at work before going home and watching like four episodes of Criminal Minds before going to bed. I feel like we’re all so obsessed with other people’s trauma as a source of entertainment. Which is kind of fucking yucky. This song is me critiquing myself but also the listener for making it all the way through what for me is quite a heavy record. There’s something voyeuristic about our obsession with artistic expressions of pain (even though it's because people relate to it). I just thought it was interesting.

'Certain Death' is out today on major streaming platforms, you can order the limited pink vinyl edition HERE.