Dispatch - The General
Bang Bang (1998) on Itunes | Official Website | Free Album Streaming



It’s too bad Dispatch dissolved in 2004 because listening to Bang Bang, with its great melodies and visual imagery, you can’t help but wonder where the band would have taken their sound had they continued. Compared to their last album (Silent Steeples, 1996), this album has more cohesion - which makes it an easier listen. More importantly though, it just seems like the band had more confidence (and felt more at ease) with who they were as artists.

Like Jack Johnson’s records, this album is pretty laid-back (with some really catchy riffs) to the extent that you can probably set it as ambiance music and you won’t get pumped or stressed. On the other hand though, if you start listening to the lyrics (most notably in The General), you start sensing there’s a deeper story.

In The General, there’s this one line (“I have seen the others and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting…”) that’s constantly repeated and every time I hear it, it hits me.

It’s not that they’re as political as K’Naan but they are similar to him in that they handle the subjects of their songs with such grace and gentleness. There’s no overt message in their songs. Even if they did though, they handle it with so much subtlety that it simply becomes part of the verbal imagery that they weave so smoothly within their melodies.

On their 2004 farewell concert, 100,000 people attended. They were surprised but after listening to their album, I’m not surprised at all. With this album, they weren’t just musicians, they became storytellers. In the end, I felt like I had met some friendly faces who showed me - and allowed me to experience - what life was like as they saw it.