Thomas Dollbaum - Wellswood (2022) Hi-Res

There are only eight songs on Thomas Dollbaum’s Wellswood, yet by the time they end, you almost have to hear the album all over again. These aren’t typical songs, and Dollbaum is not your typical artist. Having spent most of his life in Tampa, Florida, in 2015, he high tailed it to New Orleans. While working as a carpenter, he got a master’s degree in poetry from the University of New Orleans. He also began recording Wellswood in an old hotel suite converted into a recording studio.

Over time these songs took on a life of their own. They open up in the most unusual ways. A meditation on the dark underbelly of the Sunshine State, Florida begins as a muddy little track that breaks free of its moorings and begins to rock with abandon, even as the lyrics create depressing images that are impossible to forget, “I promise you my teeth/ if you promise me your hand/ and I’m going to give you the most beautiful funeral that I possibly can.” The music swells on waves of guitar and organ, building and fading, creating a tour-de-force in less than five minutes.

The tale is one that’s only too familiar to Dollbaum, “people move to Florida to run away from their problems, but instead of leaving them behind, they bring the same problems with them. These are the people I grew up with, people struggling to start life over in a place promised as paradise.” A paradise, perhaps, but it could just as easily be a place where dreams go to die.

“All Is Well” easily has the sound of Hall and Oates, yet the closer you listen, the more you realize what is going on inside this song is something rarely covered in blue-eyed soul or soul of any kind. The narrator takes a cold, hard look at himself and knows he will always seem to come up lacking, “Some people need a woman to hold on to/Some people need that night train wine/I need both dear, because I’m selfish and unkind.” Clearly, this is the dark underbelly of the Philadelphia soul sound.

Dollbaum observes the people who live on the fringes. They are not examples of worlds where we aspire to live. Rather they are the worlds we are trying to escape, worlds that are painful, dirty and filled with people who may be less than loveable. A world he’s seen up close on “Work Hard”. He makes it clear, “Drunk on the back porch of my bedroom / Drunk everytime you want to watch Sunday morning cartoons / Everytime you want me to talk I can’t say nothing / Everytime you want me to shut the fuck up / I got to run my mouth and mean nothing I say / What’s wrong with me?”

Instead of being depressing, the world ends up being one that leads to inspiration, simply setting up realities that, while seeming to be inescapable, give us hope. Sometimes the truth hurts, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear it. On Wellswood Thomas Dollbaum captivates by telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may.