Dead Dads Club - Dead Dads Club (2026) Hi Res

Life at the front line of indie music hasn’t seemed to fatigue Chilli Jesson, the man behind the musical project Dead Dads Club, whose previous endeavours include fronting the beloved indie outfit Palma Violets and contributing to Fontaines DC’s latest record Romance. But on Dead Dads Club, Jesson’s ideas aren’t tired, nor are they disillusioned with what is perhaps an overlooked contribution to the scene. They instead feel affirmed, in the knowledge that on this record, they’ve finally found their place.

The Skinny: On Dead Dads Club, Jesson can be found reflecting on his 13-year-old self, who had to painfully endure the death of his father to drug addiction. The fact that this project has been a long time in the making feels markedly evident on the record, tapping into the rawness of the experience in its real time, but approaching it with the wisdom only life can provide someone.

That wisdom isn’t just funnelled through the lyrical performance, which is as blunt, emotional and confronting as you would expect from a project like this, but also in the arrangements.

It moves from the dry acoustic melody of the opening track ‘It’s Only Just Begun’ and ‘Junkyard Radiator’ to the amped up aggression of ‘Humming Wires’ and ‘Goosebumps’.

The melting pot of Jesson’s experiences, which began during the haze of indie nostalgia with Palma Violets and has more recently placed him as a collaborator within dystopian worlds of modern-day post-punk, comes to a head on ‘Running Out Of Gas’.

It’s as lyrically urgent and cathartic as he needs to be on this record, disarming himself from his own self-defences and expressing emotional vulnerability, to simply express that he has nothing left to give. But his vocal performance contradicts that, for its heartbreaking portrayal hints towards a world of sonic depth that clearly has so much to offer the music scene.

The verdict: The very best songs on Dead Dads Club are driven by Jesson’s melody writing, because the aforementioned tracks showcase his ability to make something expansive yet intimate with his emotive knack for chord progressions, and rightfully, Jesson aims to punctuate the consistency with regular energy shifts, which will be intriguing and undoubtedly cathartic when viewed through the lens of the wider subject, sometimes interrupting the seamlessness of the sonic journey. But, as Dead Dads Club proves, life is full of unpredictability, and in that light, the record accurately portrays that.