Nothing new from Dropsonic

Tongue firmly in cheek, Dropsonic guitarist/vocalist Dan Dixon says, “I was thinking we were gonna make it by now and achieve some sort of financial success.”

His band’s new album, The Big Nothing (Moodswing), collects some of Dixon’s darker and more doubting thoughts. “You have your optimistic days and your more negative days and that’s where most of the songs on this record come from — on days when I’m not in the best frame of mind.”

The droll 25-year-old Dixon, who joined Dropsonic when he was 19, looks at the music business from a slightly jaded perspective. “I was just thinking, it’s been five fuckin’ years — and, basically, what have I done?”

By some standards, Dixon — who began playing clubs at 14 — has achieved plenty. Last year, he performed on two different stages back-to-back at Music Midtown, with Dropsonic and as a hired-gun for Angie Aparo, and also toured the U.S. with Aparo. “The past couple of years have been an education of what it’s like in the major-label world, and I’m not really interested in that at all anymore. It’s ugly, even worse than I thought. You’ve got bands that can’t even play, getting signed and Pro Tooling their records so it sounds like they can play. Big, huge multi-platinum bands — and it’s everybody nowadays, it seems nobody can play anymore.”

Dixon, bassist Dave Chase and drummer Brian Hunter really play on Dropsonic’s new record, a massive slab of focused noise and controlled emotion. Recalling the best of ’70s blues-based rock, but without the bloated pretense. “Yes, we actually play,” Dixon says. “Dropsonic’s not a computer program.”??