Elliott Dawson’s new album is a journey. It begins with a track set at the titular Hamilton Central Station, an abandoned underground train station in central Hamilton that a Warehouse was built on top of. There’s the chugging sound of a train pulling in, before our storyteller relays his mixed feelings on growing up in his hometown.
“They built a Warehouse over it / No chance to go forth / No chance to go north,” he rues in the Bildungsroman-constructed opener, but he’s never too bitter. “The atmosphere’s hard to scrub from your skin / But I don’t blame myself,” he sings later. “I kept my end of the promise I worked as hard as you wanted.”
Dawson’s album closes with a track titled “Trauma Porn”, in which he reckons with modern culture’s concerning and voyeuristic obsession with other people’s pain. “What will it be now baby? / Murder, suicide? / Watching the blood drip down / Having the time of our lives / Euthanise me / I’m doing everything and feeling nothing,” he wryly sings under a fountain of jazzy notes.
From Hamilton to trauma porn: it’s quite the journey. In between those two exhilarating pillar tracks? Death. Lots of thoughts of death. Dawson’s album is called Certain Death, after all. It’s an undeniably existential record, Dawson facing down his mortality with hardened resolve.
“This record took a lot out of me. I did a lot of staring at the ceiling and scratching my head, like do I really want to go there? Some things are better left in the ground, and this one felt like exhuming my own remains,” he says of his second album.
He isn’t wrong. Certain Death is the sound of a musician pouring everything he has into his art.
From front to back, it’s a thrillingly maximalist collection, Dawson working with an expanded team of close Wellington collaborators (including members of Revulva and Wiri Donna, the latter of which features Dawson as lead guitarist) to try out a number of art-meets-post rock fits. (It makes a lot of sense that Dawson was asked to support venerable post-rock adventurers Black Midi when they came to Wellington.)
As Under the Radar noted last year, Dawson is “pushing the boat out like few other local talents right now,” and the bold Certain Death is his just reward.
Following the release of Certain Death, Rolling Stone AU/NZ caught up with Dawson as part of our Up-And-Coming Aotearoa Artists series, which you can read below.
Aotearoa listeners can catch Dawson celebrating his new album at Auckland’s Double Whammy tomorrow night (April 25th) and Wellington’s San Fran on Thursday, May 1st. Ticket information for both shows is available here.
Elliott Dawson’s Certain Death is out now.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ: How did music influence you in your early life? / When did you discover your passion for creating music?
Elliott Dawson: I starting singing and playing music fairly young, like nine or ten, and for me music has always been an escape or method of expression for storytelling, and so I’ve always gravitated to stuff that’s slightly more extra/dramatic, as opposed to stuff that you can just have on in the background. I started songwriting when I was about 13, having picked up guitar after playing the violin extremely badly for the previous 6/7 years.
At that point, I just wanted play in bands and the rest is kind of history through high school until now. Did a bunch of Rockquest stuff (as everyone kind of did) and then started new bands when I moved to Wellington for uni in 2016. I was as a child (and remain) a fairly dramatic person so music has always been something that mediates my sense of self or helps me relate more authentically to the world around me.
Playing in groups and seeing live music has always made me feel like “I want to do that,” and so I think that’s really where I started wanting to make music, kind of regardless of whatever I was seeing.
Credit: Vanessa Cone
What artists influenced you growing up?
The first album I ever owned was Songs About Jane by Maroon Five (on CD), but I think most of the stuff I was listening to was like classic post-punk/punk-pop in the early days, like Paramore, My Chemical Romance, and a bit of Linkin Park which definitely grounded the desire to play rock music.
I think also being into musicals as a child really honed me in on music/songwriting being a kind of storytelling. My parents aren’t like hyper into music like I am so I never had the benefit of parents with great taste in music and had to go on my own journey to find what I liked.
In the high school days I definitely moved into more of a neo-soul phase and was listening to stuff like Nick Hakim, Tom Misch, Lianne La Havas, with an honourable mention to stuff like Hockey Dad and the 1975. I’m not sure if any of that comes out in my music now and definitely not really on the new album, which is more a product of the stuff I was listening to while making it (lots of Blackstar, Yves Tumor, Puma Blue).
What are some career highlights so far?
Career highlights would have to be opening for Black Midi (RIP) and also for Fontaines D.C. (that was with Wiri Donna). Playing Welcome to Nowhere (also RIP) before it ended is definitely a highlight. Writing the music, for me, is a vehicle to playing it live and so it’s the big shows that are the most special to me.
Being able to write, release, and perform original music with musicians I love is such a privilege, though, that sometimes just having a practice with the band feels like a dream. Still doing it now when so many people fall away or psyche themselves out of their own talent is also something I try to hold close to my chest.
Tell us about your new album. What themes did you explore on the record?
Kind of the whole point of this album was that I wasn’t aiming to communicate a particular idea or theme. My first album (Hang Low) was super conceptual and I wanted to go way off the other end with Certain Death and make something authentic which required me to draw on my own life and express way more vulnerability lyrically than I did on Hang Low.
So the guiding light lyrically for Certain Death was just that I was being honest with myself and the listener and that I didn’t rely on character ideas as something interesting/to hide behind. In a certain sense it kind of feels like I’m releasing my first album twice, because Certain Death is about my life and Hang Low wasn’t. In a way this was extremely more difficult because there’s more risk involved, and I’m generally pretty risk-averse with being honest about how I feel (because I feel pretty strongly about most things that are worth writing about).
But part of that goal was to risk more, because I’m most captivated by art that has that kind of authenticity to it and I wanted to chase that as an idea. The final song on the album (“Trauma Porn”) is then me flipping it on myself and making a joke out of the obsession with the hard stuff that I focused the album around.
Did you experience any classic “Second Album Syndrome” anxiety?
I definitely experienced anxiety making this album but I don’t know if it was because of second album syndrome. I think the issue was the lack of a thematic guiding concept – I really struggle if I don’t have something identifiable to ground me/work towards. Because the point was not to have an idea to work towards, I felt very lost in the process/it was fairly chaotic. But that was a good challenge in and of itself, because it involved letting go of any idea of what the album should be – it is just what it is. James Goldsmith (who co-produced/engineered/mixed the album) was really helpful with trusting the process and massaging me into a place where I could let go of the idea of control that would have otherwise held things back. Scary though!!
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You had a lot of great collaborators on Certain Death. How did they all help enhance the album?
My music is fairly strange/chaotic and so I am really grateful to work with people who indulge me. James was with the entire album start to finish and we spent a lot of time tinkering/world-building and it was a much more collaborative process constructing the record this time round.
I’m not much of a producer so it’s so nice to have someone like James with a clear mind about where things should go. My band is also incredible. Olivia Campion has been on the drums since day one and contributes so much to the sound. Harry Scholes on bass is a wizard and is also a large part of how the album sounds overall. I love my horn players (Lily Rose Shaw, Elizabeth Hocking, and James MacEwan) who I rely on to round things out along with Reuben Topzand on the keys/synths. Bianca Bailey also did some backing vocals and provided significant amounts of emotional support.
What kind of personality traits and values do you believe it takes to succeed in the music industry?
Speaking as someone who has had very little success in the music industry, I have absolutely no idea. I just think you have to work really hard and get lucky. Anthony Metcalf once said you have to pair unrelenting self-belief with a real sense of what is actually possible/reasonable to expect, and I think that also sums it up pretty good. Not to mention the music actually has to be good. Generally, also you have to have a pretty thick skin and good timing.
As an aside, I’m hyper aware of the fact that the music I make and want to hear/lift up isn’t really for the most part the kind of music that is prone to music industry success. I’m so cool with that. My idea of success would be to sell out a Whammy/San Fran set of shows on the album tour and have artists I admire say they liked the album, in a way that made me feel like I’d made a contribution to the lexicon/culture of independent music in Aotearoa.
How would you describe your music to a potential fan?
Honestly, I’d just tell them to go listen to it and make up their own mind. The tagline I’ve been using is ‘angry art rock’, which is a little pretentious but speaks more to my commitment to be different to every other dude with a guitar. I’m not interested in making music that sounds like anyone else and I honestly couldn’t do that if I tried (and I think I’ve achieved that with the new album).
I’m also pretty into pushing myself beyond with each subsequent release so that things remain fresh/challenging because otherwise what’s the point?. If that’s not a conversation people want to have I just say I make weird rock music with saxophone.
What are your goals for 2025 and beyond? What can fans expect from you this year?
My goals for 2025 are to put the album out, play some shows and enjoy life. Hopefully someone likes/buys the album and I can feel like I’ve achieved something too/contributed to the #discourse. Then it’s time to find the right left turn and start writing the next one. Fans can expect me to be extremely annoying on the internet and then disappear off the face of the earth when it’s all done.
