Deep Sea Diver - Billboard Heart

Billboard Heart is the fourth album from Deep Sea Diver, available to order now on pink vinyl from Mint and Sealed.

St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found newly ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. It’s their fourth album and first for Sub Pop, and it is a coup, a triumph over self-doubt, transforming failure into an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and strength.

Deep Sea Diver mastermind Jessica Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. Over dinner with longtime collaborator Andy Park, a humbling confession that she needed help inspired Dobson to reimagine and reinvigorate Deep Sea Diver. This revelation set the stage for the power and brilliance of Billboard Heart, Three years before Dobson’s galvanizing dinner with Park, Deep Sea Diver issued its third album, 2020’s Impossible Weight, via the colossal indie imprint, ATO. It was a significant step up, and earned the band a groundswell of exposure and a spot on Billboard charts. 

From end to end, the material on Billboard Heart is astonishing. The title track is the one song Deep Sea Diver is a radiant and magnificent thing, the billowing synths of Elliot Jackson and tunneling pedal steel of Greg Leisz bolstering an anthem for fearlessly advancing into the future. “Emergency” links hardcore’s vim to electroclash’s instant allure with Dobson’s captivating vocals and guitar work in the spotlight. Tender and vulnerable, “Tiny Threads” is a sweeping anthem for anyone trying to hold anything together—life, love, themselves. “If it haunts me, let it haunt me,” Dobson sings softly over a stillness framed only by bass and noise. She lets her guitar careen into feedback, then steadily sculpts it into something tuneful. It’s a lifetime of anxiety and sublimation, crystallized into 10 seconds. Billboard Heart feels that way at large. Billboard Heart emerged when Dobson trusted her instincts, a personal breakthrough that prompted an artistic one. It is, in turn, the best Deep Sea Diver album yet, a defiant and brilliant exclamation mark at the end of a long period of wandering.