“Do You Want Love?” by Dave Depper

Dave Depper Do You Want Love?

Portland-based musician Dave Depper has shared ‘Do You Want Love?’ taken from his upcoming debut solo album “Emotion Freedom Technique”, out June 9th on Portland’s Tender Loving Empire. Depper is the guitarist in Death Cab for Cutie, and has also spent time playing with Menomena, Fruit Bats, Mirah, Corin Tucker, Laura Gibson, and Ray LaMontagne prior to joining Death Cab full-time.

The perennial side man, Dave Depper has become the connection point between a staggering number of Northwest bands, playing with Menomena, Fruit Bats, Mirah, Corin Tucker, Laura Gibson, and Ray LaMontagne before getting snatched up to be a full-time member of Death Cab for Cutie. Emotional Freedom Technique was born one night when he and his friends decided to play a game where they each had to write 20 songs in 12 hours and come back together at the end of it to listen to everyone’s efforts together. When Depper presented his, almost everyone picked up on the synth-pop beat of “Never Worked So Hard,” a nascent but catchy tune half-finished and unlike any of the music Depper had played before.

Straddling the line between pop and despair, Emotional Freedom Technique is a portrait of what happens when someone is flung across the world on tour — grateful to be there, grateful for the success and the adventures, but ultimately lonely. “Your Voice on the Radio” features friend and former bandmate Laura Gibson adding vocals about unrealized and unsatisfied love over bubbling bass and sparkling, multiplying shakers and synths that build to a deceptively joyous chorus. Songs like “Do You Want Love” and “Communication” lean forward on cutting deep, propulsive grooves. Grappling with loneliness, the longing for human connection and the fear thereof, Depper strings ornate synth melodies together into simple hooks that speak to the most relatable reasons we listen to pop music — to remember we aren’t alone, and to still have a good time with it.

Of his debut album, “Emotion Freedom Technique”, Depper stated “Throughout my career, though I’d played with so many different people, I constantly struggled to find a style of writing and voice that seemed authentically my own. Suddenly, and almost by accident, it found me.”

“Emotion Freedom Technique” is out June 9th 2017 via Tender Loving Empire

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