“Individ,” the latest album by The Dodos, is ultimately concerned with the idea of a person. Who that person is, exactly, is up for debate.
The word “individ” indicates a solitary person in several languages. The album’s cover boasts flashes of color, a figure desperately forcing open a portal bursting with light. A devilish presence lurks in the background, and it becomes clear that the person is endeavoring to escape from their respective humanity.
The album is permeated with questions, most of them directed inward. The singer addresses “you,” though it seems he is speaking to himself. He states in “Pattern/Shadow,” “You blew us away / and I could not escape / I’ll never give in / to your pattern,” in an attempt to distance himself from his nature.
Given that The Dodos are typically recognized for their immersive medleys, complex structures, and distinctive rhythms, “Individ” does not disappoint. The album recalls other famous acts in the indie rock genre—The Shins, alt-J and The Strokes, to name a few—but the experience of listening to the collection beckons an altogether unique experience.
“Individ” is the kind of album you can stumble upon late at night and cling to for weeks as you try to catch every detail that might have gone unnoticed.
“Precipitation,” the first track on the album, serves as its perfect introduction. It starts out on a lighter note than most of the songs that follow it, and gradually delves into a more elaborate musical scheme that reverberates with energy. Its opening recalls rain—the precipitation mentioned in the track’s title, perhaps—in its soft, moaning instrumental resonation and its eventual lead-in to careful guitar-picking and quiet percussion.
“Precipitation” also informs the album’s primary recurring theme: escape of self. The song even goes so far to say, “Until now I was another / What song to hear / When in another’s head.”
The individual titles of the tracks emphasize other themes present throughout “Individ.” The titles “Bubble,” “Precipitation” and “The Tide” evoke images of water, a reflective, malleable substance. In addition, the titles “Competition,” “Goodbyes and Ending” and “Pattern/Shadow” draw attention to notions of opposing forces, the separation between who the speaker is and who he wants to be.
Each track has its own individualized assortment of layers, meticulous arrangements that are able to both soothe and revitalize. What stands out is that while each song is constructed in a way that seems distinctive, the album as a whole comes together quite fantastically. “Individ” features no outliers, no songs that make you wonder about their inclusion with the others.
The abstractness of the album’s message clashes to interesting effect with the preciseness of its instrumentals. As the singer asks, “If I let you go / could I forget you?” in “Competition,” he is grounded by the abrupt fastidiousness of the music supporting him.
The lyrics can, at times, become repetitive; and although this drives home many of the points the album hopes to make, some songs can seem unbalanced in terms of their music-to-lyric ratio. “Individ” skews its focus toward musical arrangement rather than lyricism, and though this is done effectively and consistently, one may hope for more insight into the enigmatic speaker’s psyche.
“Individ” by The Dodos is thoughtful and mesmerizing, a wistful look into the mind of a person torn between two selves driven by sumptuous mechanisms and too few words.
