Chilli Jesson has been a vital part of the indie scene since his first project in 2013, Palma Violets, and occasionally filling in for bassist Conor Deegan during Fontaines D.C. gigs. Now, he has settled down with Dead Dads Club, alongside Jim Smith (bass and backing vocals), Ian Rae (lead guitar), and Ian Saxelby-Smith (drums). Their debut album, ‘Dead Dads Club’, was released late January, and it is a melodic, eloquent piece on grief, loss, and everything in between. Jesson has had a stacked year, yet I managed to catch him on the phone throughout a bustling London Friday afternoon. 

Jesson played Belfast Vital last summer, a career highlight. Eager to chat about the day, he exclaims: “It’s by far the biggest gig we've played. I suppose the big thing of the day for me was all the crew and everyone joking after our set about how I was playing with Fontaines D.C. later that night, so that really stuck in my memory.” When asked about the album and what song he would pick to depict the vibe of the whole record, Jesson responded with ‘Don’t Blame the Son for the Sins of the Father’ as “it embodies the whole record, got a real delicacy to it, but it can also be really hard in places.” 

“It’s a really personal record for me”, Jesson tells, “it’s about the death of my father when I was 14. So, the majority of it was this idea of it being a concept record, but between me and Rudy Greaves (Dead Dads Club Co-founder), it was very collaborative, and then when Carlos came on board to produce it, it became even more collaborative.” As the zooms of cyclists and cars race by, Jesson excuses the bustling environment he’s surrounded by, yet that’s the reality of being a booked and busy musician. The album concludes with the positively witty track, ‘Need You So Bad’, when asked why this was the particular choice for the final track on the album, Jesson says: “It originally wasn’t there, the album was going to finish with the penultimate track. But it felt too depressing, and I had had this song for a little while; it has humour and positivity. The record felt a bit imbalanced, and I felt that song really balanced the whole record out for me.”

Jesson explains that when writing the album, he got in touch with the era of his upbringing in which he was writing about: “A lot of my older cousins would come round, and they would be listening to stuff like The Smashing Pumpkins (‘Adore’ particularly)…I wanted to be visceral with the lyrics and the music, and these records really brought me back to those moments.” Within the album, these late ‘90s and early 2000s influences shine through in tracks such as ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Hospital Pillow’. 

For the foreseeable future, Jesson says that Dead Dads Club will “be touring the record, and thinking about whatever’s next!” Don’t miss out on the rise of Dead Dads Club.

Amy Porter

 @amy.louiseporter

Image: Adrian Lee

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