So Are You In? - A Review of Devour by Dave Hause

Photo: Jen Maler

Poor Dave Hause.  He’s got another album that’s dropping today and he sounds like the the kid last kid picked for dodgeball in gym class.  Because when you think Americana at it’s finest, it’s not baseball, it’s gym class dodgeball, right (I blame the lyrics of his song "Bricks" for that imagery)?  But I digress.  Today, October 8th, we move even further away from another The Loved Ones album as Dave Hause continues to sing about his shattered American Dream.  And I still haven’t decided if I’m ok with this.  

My journey to being a Dave Hause fan is a strange one.  Most times, someone hands me an album and tell me “listen to this” and I, the obedient friend, leave it in the car cd player for the next 3 months.  But The Loved Ones were on a compilation cd from AMP Magazine (creatively named sAMPler) with the likes of Bracket and NOFX.  I fell in love with the song "Jane", much like every person who loves The Loved Ones, but that was it.  For some reason my 14 year old self didn’t bother to look up and more music by them.  THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH ME??? It took me another 7 years to move beyond that one song.  Since then, I’ve devoured everything.  

*SEGUE!!*

Dave Hause’s new album, Devour (wink), started off as the third album for The Loved Ones, but was eventually repurposed for his solo work.  And as much as I want to see the band reunite, there’s no way the group could have created such a resonating feeling.  Normally I’d label an album like this as your stereotypical man in a midlife crisis album, one where he looks around at all his riches and realizes that it’s not all cracked up to be, but the press release quote really captures the truth of Devour:

“Devour is about that inherent American appetite,” Hause says. “It’s in all the songs
in some degree. There’s a reason why Tony Soprano became such a huge American
icon – he’s this guy with this insane appetite for women and food and power. I think
for the American public to latch onto a figure like that says something. Some of the
positive things about America come from that as well, but there’s a real sense of
reckoning that comes from devouring everything in front of you. Is it ever enough?”

This album manages to drop at a pinnacle point in my life, so pardon me for reading into it this way, but these songs speak the frustration I think many 20-somethings go through, the whole moment you realize those childhood dreams aren’t exactly obtainable.  That moment when you have to disappoint your 8 year old self.  Maybe it took Dave Hause to 35 to realize the grand plan he set out for yourself in Kindergarten isn’t happening.  

I don’t want to be cliched and say this sound is more grown up than Hause’s first album, Resolutions, because it still sounds like the Hause we all know, but like I said, he sounds sadder.  

The single off this album, “We Could Be Kings” really plays up that moment of “hey maybe we can’t do everything we ever dreamed of”.  Rejection in the opening line, followed by the standard reflection on the summers of our youth, and the final stab to the heart “Oh no did it rip you apart/To be told we could be kings when we were damned from the start?”  Because lets face it, no matter where you come from, you were never told that you could be anything less than a king, the best, the tops.  And not all of us start on a path that leads us to this greatness, not all of us have the Kate Middleton life path.  

The most striking lyric being on the 6th track, "Before", in which Hause sings “There's a place I'd go/Before it all broke down”  There was no teeth sharpening for me, but there was certainly a moment in time where I did feel “adrift on this plastic plague of a sea”.  That moment in time that you haven’t thought about in almost 10 years is bubbled to the surface as Hause sings on, cathartically about his past expectations leaving you to sort through on your own.  

I’ll admit, by the end of these 12 tracks, I was sobbing like a baby.  Dave Hause really nails every emotion I’m feeling a this stage in my life and this album joins the shelf of other album that were released at milestones in my life: Spice by Spice Girls, Take This To Your Grave by Fall Out Boy, and The Gold Record by The Bouncing Souls.  Maybe you’ll listen to this album and decide I’m a big ol crazy pants, but it’s not often that an entire album can sound track an entire period of my life.  I hope you love Devour as much as I do.