It has always been a challenge to define what it is that Dijon does. Music, absolutely, but beyond that, the immersive scenes he sets accept – rejoice within – an air of illusive indefinability. Opaque in their nature to belong anywhere specific, yet simultaneously gleaming with specificity towards the most curious of musical moment, lyrical detail, the Maryland-raised, Los Angeles-based songwriter thrives in an ability to liken his debut album to the anonymity and surprise of a roll of disposal film being developed. And why not? His path album-bound has borne many turns and trials, so it’s only natural for the result to be hyper-mosaic, reflective of the patchwork identity that he’s carved out for himself through more than a half-decade of front-facing independent music.

 

Absolutely builds strongly on that whirlwind of a foundation. His roots as one half of transcendental duo, Abhi//Dijon – most well-known for their sole way-paving project, 2014 – gave him a start as both a producer and a vocalist who made use of the time to stretch the uniqueness and ubiquity of his register. When Abhi and Dijon split amicably, his soloist exhibitions reached their first zenith at debut EP, Sci Fi 1 where a blendaline merging of his own hyper experimental, yet seemingly always romantically inclined sound encapsulated an audience in a space yet to be explored. 2020 brought with it How Do You Feel About Getting Married?: an even-deeper dive into the explorative boundlessness of his sounds continuing to collide over and over again with an obsessive discourse on broken-heartedness and fleeting memories. And in 2021, with Absolutely, he’s seemingly mastered what it is that he does, which in and of itself, still can’t really be defined. And that’s the point.

 

Take our words with a grain of salt, of course, but take Absolutely, too, with a glass of orange wine, an unseasonably warm Autumn twilight, and a walk home after one too many at your favorite neighborhood dive bar. Something in the oh, so reminiscent, yet impossible to pinpoint breathes through every imperfect note on the album. It’s in the unmastered vocalism exploding with an unparalleled ability to capture emotion; it’s in the slide guitar distorting the reality of the sound; it’s in the vernacular nuance of his plucked strings and analogue drums; and it’s in the poeticism of a default nature that seems to be at once brokenhearted and also exploding with quiet charisma. Dijon, it would seem, is making music that is absolutely authentic to himself, and subsequently so relatable to an audience seeking emotion-fueled anthems with which to soundtrack the quotidian simplicity and enduring complexities of their lives.

 

‘The album doesn’t explore genres, it boxes them, knocks ‘em out TKO second round. There isn’t tourism on the album, there is graffiti,’ he tweeted upon Absolutely’s release, rightfully defending the authentic indefinability in his sound.

 

Take Annie for instance, where the amalgamate of Dijon’s vocal explorations fold into one meandering, poignant composition. The breaking distortions at its opening moments pleading for our nom-do-chanson, Annie to change her mind sets a precedent that is never avoided. Then, the self-layering of his own vocals towards the track’s break, the elongated, broken, and imploring howls through the track’s closing moments, and the high points of his backing falsetto through it all. It’s a self-orchestrated ballad of heart that appeals to any listeners for its bleeding honesty and rejoiceful pain. And that’s just one song off the album.

 

From beginning to end, Absolutely navigates the ambiguity and opacity of stylistic adherence, instead opting in wide-ranging detail for a violent smattering of so many sounds tethered akin by the powerfully evocative yet delicate beguile of Dijon’s voice and his fingers on a guitar. In that identity, the album is truly, simply his, and the story being told, one rooted honestly and wholeheartedly in the lineage of Dijon touch that cannot be replicated. So much of the album feels plucked from varying points along route 66, from various moments in the last half-century of music’s evolution, that the Absolutely roll on film being developed tells the tale of a brokenhearted road trip in sepia tint. Smoky bars in Texas set the scene for Noah’s Highlight Reel while Rodeo Clown feels like it could have been a precursor to the moment that Noah’s Highlight Reel delineates. The Dress surfs along top the wavy spray of a 90’s nuanced synthesizer, immersing a listener in the recounting memories of Dijon and his used-to-be lover getting ready for a night out of dancing, recalling to the forefront, too, memories of pop-adjacent R&B ballads – or perhaps R&B-adjacent pop ballads – or perhaps neither at all – that filled the late-night airwaves of his generation’s formative years. For barely a minute, Did You See It feels as though it’s built on the subtly poetic psychedelia that singular tracks taken from his previous two projects, do you light up (How Do You Feel About Getting Married?) and Bad Luck (Sci Fi 1), have established as expected construct within his collections. Absolutely’s opening inclusion, Big Mike’s places a listener directly in the jam session where, as visuals he’s released on those jam sessions would detail, a corner piano and a dining room table littered with musical instruments and stale beer cans feels awkwardly warmed by yellow light and the blatant defiance for genre that Dijon and his bandmates, Michael Gordon and Noah Le Gros bring into frame.

 

Absolutely different, Dijon masters his meandering defiance in the face of stylistic expectation, spray-painting the halls of genre with an emotional distortion relatable to anyone’s own path.