Concert promoter du jour and longtime jam band impresario Peter Shapiro has chosen Phobia by Dopapod has his personal pick for album of the year.
As Dopapod prepares to go on an indefinite hiatus after the band’s upcoming New Year’s run, the progtronic stalwarts have received an outpouring of love and sadness from fans. This renewed sense of adoration comes across in a note from Shapiro explaining why Dopapod’s last album has become one of his personal favorites after he recently saw the band perform in Philadelphia.
“It is hard to translate the magic of what a band does live on-stage in front of an audience onto a studio recording….but, ‘Phobia’ by Dopapod does that for me,” Shapiro wrote. “I started really listening to it recently, at the end of the year, after seeing Dopapod perform live in Philadelphia a few weeks back. The band is able to bring the kinetic energy of their live show, which makes your feet tap and head bop, into real life in songs such as ‘Wizzy’ and I love the ambient and reverb tinged lyrics and guitar edges and drum kicks and fills and guitar flares on the lead track, ‘Let It All Out’.”
He continued, “The song ‘Best Friends’ feels like an awesome mashup between Metallica and the Beatles Mahavishnu-era meets Donovan to me. That is a unique sound that I really love and it’s that song that lifted the album to 2024 favorite status for me.”
Released in April a week after the band dropped another album, Aiboh, Phobia cemented Dopapod’s discography with the completion of a clever palindromic diptych. At first, fans believed Aiboh to be the group’s first album without a palindrome title, but together, the two album titles form the word “aibohphobia,” itself a palindrome meaning a fear of palindromes.
Read Peter Shapiro’s full statement below and scroll down to stream Phobia.
Dopapod is gearing up to say farewell (for now at least) with a New Year’s run culminating with two shows at Woodlands Tavern in Columbus, OH. Find tickets and a full list of the band’s remaining tour dates here.
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Dopapod – Phobia