across how to quit smoking, It’s clear that Dominic Fike has mastered the art of the distinctive Dominic Fike sound. It’s in his distorted, sunburned guitar, in the quaver in his voice when he raps, in all the Florida nostalgia that’s packed into his songs. This is his third album, but it doesn’t feel that far removed from the 22-year-old who sparked a label war after uploading lo-fi songs to SoundCloud in the late 2010s — and who went wildly viral thanks to hits like “3 Nights” and “Babydoll,” the latter of which is still skyrocketing in the charts. The anger and anguish and the ability to come up with a really good hook are still there, even if the pressures and stresses of adulthood have reached new heights.
how to quit smoking Fike was found at age 30, now a father and still figuring out a lot of things. In his previous albums, he has been candid about what he has been through: Fike recorded his first EP while under house arrest accused of murdering a police officer; When the case came to a head, he was in jail for violating parole. Once Columbia won the label bidding war and signed Fike for a reported $4 million, he used a large portion of that money to bail his mother out of prison, where she was serving time on drug charges. (“Everybody’s looking at me like I’m not invested/Bitch, you know how stressed I was?” he raps on “How Much Is Weed,” the angsty track that kicks off 2023’s excellent sunburn.)
While dealing with loneliness and some very public breakups, she has outlined her journey with sobriety and addiction in her music. His songs are based on things he remembers or wishes had been different, and how to quit smoking It grapples with the same existential concerns as Fike tries to break bad habits and admit mistakes. “I don’t even go to the street for a cup of ice,” he sings on the surprisingly sunny “Pangea.” “If I screw it up, I’m going back to the hood.” On the dreamy “Cabby” with Emma Ogier and Love Spell, he confesses, “I’m not holy, I’m not Jesus Christ/But if this wine were water, I’d feel fit to drive.” It’s especially thrilling to see him pull in different guests throughout the album; Ogier also appears on the bouncy “Small Town” with Gabriel Jacobi; Grace Ives takes on the smoky “Honeylove.”
There’s an emptiness there as he’s trying to let go of his vices, and Fike is trying to find anything that will fill it: memories of the past, late-night drives, relationships that he knows didn’t work. But too many of Fyke’s songs can seem fleeting, as if he’s too eager to fully engage in whatever emotion he’s creating. He detects a mood before revealing too much and moves on. He struggles on the “casting call”, trying to reconnect with someone who can help him escape for a while. “I’m cool, I’m cool—right now I’m cool,” he stammers on the song, suggesting that he is anything but — yet he doesn’t succumb to his turmoil. Most tracks barely reach the three-minute mark; A large majority end up as quick, two-minute sketches.
And yet, even in their brevity, the songs are good, layered, and surprisingly upbeat. Opener, “Wallflower,” welcomes fans immediately, featuring tons of intricate guitar work and rich textures, not to mention the endlessly catchy ways each verse plays out. “Squeeze” is infectiously bright; “White Keys” immediately sticks in your mind. Fike is an especially good live performer; Many of them are begging for the serious makeover he often gives to his songs on stage. They are indebted to alt-rock, and especially Weezer, who joined the feckin’ sunburn’Its extraordinary “Think Twice.”
When Fike leans toward deep, heavy emotions, he can deliver a serious gut punch. “Spotlight/Inner Child” closes the album, and it finally says everything he was trying to find a way to say. He sets it up as a conversation with artist Tae-K, who raps from prison, where he is serving an 80-year sentence for multiple counts of murder and aggravated robbery. Fike brought it up when he invited him to sing: “We were traveling around the world, I’d just had a son,” he says. “We’re traveling a lot, I’m feeling cut off from home, umm/And I’m growing up at the same time/And so it’s just, I don’t know, turning 30, the culmination of all these things, turning 30/I don’t know where you’re at in life right now/But I’d be curious to hear it.” Tay-K tells about the difficulties of his childhood, his mother, and his attempts to stay connected to his inner child in his most difficult moments. They both seem to have arrived at a central idea that Fike sang about in the first song: “No matter what happens, I’ll do my best.” Through all the losses, sorrows and similar messes, he finds a way to overcome it.