Duster: In Dreams

Immediately when an artist starts talking social media and streaming metrics, the ruler and red pen apply. It’s that simple.

On the flipside, however, because—let’s be honest—no matter how ridiculous or absurd something is, there’s always an exception to a rule. In the case of numbers and metrics, Duster has flipped the script like no other band from the underground. Not just by the soaring numbers they have gained across ‘all platforms’, but because none of it has been of their own doing. Given how aloof this band has always been, the situation is beyond parody, an irony where even the most cynical mind is unable to frame this as some form of stunt.

Duster’s numbers don’t just defy algorithmic logic, they smash ’em up. TikTok (just saying the name makes you want to vomit into the nearest bin) is another where Duster’s numbers just about break the internet, not before ushering in a new generation of listeners.

Yup, the kids like their sadcore too, and with Inside Out clocking in at over 260 million streams and counting, whether this new generation of listenership will take the plunge with ‘the album’ is perhaps another matter. We’ll soon find out as the San Jose veterans dropped one from the sky last Friday.

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In Dreams is Duster’s fifth long-player and follows the lineage of their excellent 2022 release, Together. A cosmic blur that drew the line from one world to another, and In Dreams gains further ground with something that grows so strong with each listen, the quality on offer defies more logic than the metrics noted above.

No one has replicated the ‘Duster sound’, and even the band themselves expand on it here. The second release without co-founding member, Jason Albertini, Clay Parton and Canaan Amber conjure up hazy emotional vistas that blur the lines between generations. Take Close to Home, which sounds like Duster running diesel through an AC30, as Parton sleepily imparts with the line, “I’m smoking cigarette / But I don’t want to.” It’s simple observations like this where people of all ages can find a correlation to the simplicity that Duster offer through song. So too with Like A Movie, where Parton projects his nihilism through an equally murky lens (“I’m never coming back to you / What’s the point of this / Nothing makes any sense.”)

Tracking back and the tonal therapy begins from the first note of Quiet Eyes. A song where Duster haven’t sounded stronger, and the same could be said of Starting to Fall and Isn’t Over. The band’s go-to structures of splashing rhythms and wandering guitars littering the orbits with fairy dust.

Meanwhile, No Feel is where shoegaze intersects with lo-fi. Grainy snapshots of sound that ring with Duster’s trademark metallic echoes, which bleeds into instrumentals, Cosmotransporter and Space Trash. Moments where Duster straddle the orbits, pulling us through to the phase of In Dreams. And it’s here where Black Lace awaits. Taking the traditions of ’70s songwriting led by minor chords and hollow keys, it’s a song that rushes from the speakers like gold. It’s also Duster like we’ve never heard before.

Then there’s Poltergeist. A lost transmission captured between the lines of the band’ssound world, it’s something that feels so close yet so far away, which is why it could be the defining moment of In Dreams. It leaks into the closing song, Anhedonia. Again, with the kind of minor keys that weigh heavy on the heart, it may have been something Dennis Wilson could have written had he been around 30 years after Pacific Ocean Blues.

It’s an interesting finish to In Dreams because it underlines how the listener can be lulled into a certain way of engaging with Duster. A way where it’s almost easier to let these songs wash over you, but it’s here where the real beauty escapes your grasp. It’s not until you really get down in the groove with these songs when you realise just how strong the songwriting is. It’s even more astonishing considering Albertini’s absence, but Parton and Canaan have soldiered on, and in doing so, they’ve landed on some frightening frequencies.

“I’m so high in the cloud” confesses Parton on Starting to Fall. Not only does it encapsulate what In Dreams is, but also the band as we know it. A band who have spent decades creating windows that lead to a world of alternative realities. Make no mistake, there’s still conflict in Duster’s world, but there’s also a freedom that exceeds the one most of us experience. This is why In Dreams could quite possibly one of the albums of the year. Elusive as it is, if you can manage to travel through the window to Duster’s world, it offers something that nothing or no one else does.

In Dreams is out now via Numero Group. Purchase from Bandcamp.