When listening to ‘Not For Lack Of Trying’, the latest album from musician and vlogger dodie, you can tell that all of these issues and more have been on her mind.
Following the release of her debut album, ‘Build A Problem’, in 2021, dodie took some years to experiment with how she worked within music. She contributed a track to the final season of Olan Rogers’ underrated animated sci-fi comedy Final Space, formed the indie pop band FIZZ with Orla Gartland, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, featured on a track by Cory Wong, and appeared on the soundtrack of the 2024 video game Life Is Strange: Double Exposure.
Having explored so many avenues of musical creativity over the past four years, you might expect ‘Not For Lack Of Trying’ to bring in a wider range of sounds when compared to her debut, but in reality it follows in much the same footsteps.
Many of the tracks on the album follow the same indie-folk and chamber-pop sensibilities of its predecessor, and both albums even feature their own jazzy, bossa nova pop tunes (‘I Feel Bad For You, Dave’ on ‘Not For Lack Of Trying’ and ‘Special Girl’ on ‘Build A Problem’).
While much of the first album focused on love, relationships and how they fall apart, this album expands into themes of anxiety, dissociation, online harassment, and other troubling aspects of modern life. There are still tracks that discuss breakups and failed relationships, but they’re accompanied by interesting narrative framing (‘The List’) or an existential slant (‘The End’).
‘Not For Lack Of Trying’ mirrors its predecessor in its approach to dynamics as well. dodie and producers Joe Rubel and Peter Miles dance delicately between gentle and soft contemplations and delirious emotional catharsis, using orchestral instrumentation as a backdrop for the album’s emotional highpoints.
Songs like ‘The List’ use those orchestral elements in a similar way to some of Phoebe Bridgers’ more chamber-folk tinged tracks like ‘Funeral’, but dodie gives it her own feel with a quietly theatrical vocal delivery.
‘Smart Girl’ moves between birdsong layered with soft, nearly illegible instrumentation and giant walls of sound and reverberated voices. The dynamism of this album’s songs are one of its greatest strengths; allowing the music to explore the overwhelming chaos of anxiety and insecurity while also making time for quiet, contemplative and sad moments.
Not all of ‘Not For Lack Of Trying’ is swimming in unease about the world. ‘Darling, Angel, Baby’ is a duet with flatmate (and FIZZ member) Greta Isaac, and acts as an ode to their cat. ‘I Feel Bad For You, Dave’ is a sarcastic and satirical jab at online misogyny and the manosphere, complete with lines like, “Dave is the kind of guy who loses friends over a board game he doesn’t get”.
The album is willing to provide some moments of levity if you’re willing to go along with the ride. Just like life, you have to learn to take the low moments with the high.
‘Not For Lack Of Trying’ is a very strong album, conceptually, musically, and lyrically. If releasing music independently for ten years leading up to her first album allowed that project to arrive fully formed and confident, then the four years that came between that and her latest has only strengthened dodie’s sense of song structure and lyrical growth.
With songs like ‘I’M FINE!’ and ‘Different’ , dodie shows a more relaxed approach to structure in songwriting, and it allows the album to sprawl and grow outwards in an interesting way. Even if the future looks uncertain, the future of dodie as an artist looks brighter than ever.
Ash Douglas
Image: ‘Not For Lack of Trying’ Official Album Cover
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