Local Review: Jeff Dewsnup – A Poison Tree (In The Fog)

Jeff Dewsnup
A Poison Tree (In The Fog)
Self-Released
Street: 08.10
Jeff Dewsnup = Washed Out + Elliot Smith

Jeff Dewsnup was born in Herriman, Utah. He started playing soccer at an early age. He played for La Roca FC, a Utah youth club and excelled there. On January 12, 2021, Dewsnup signed a professional contract with Real Salt Lake becoming the youngest signing in their history. This isn’t a profile piece on a soccer prodigy, this is an album review of Jeff Dewsnup’s first solo record A Poison Tree (In The Fog).

Following the 2022 major league soccer season, Dewsnup retired from professional soccer at age 18 to pursue music and focus on his personal mental health. Mental health is the North Star of this record. Dewsnup ends the album title and every song title with (in the fog), not hiding the fact that every song exists in the foggy cloud of depression,anxiety and Dewsnup’s own bullying inner voice. Dewsnup is a brave artist that took one identity that he once loved and thrived in but ended up crushing him, and making a sea change into another identity that will help and heal him.

A Poison Tree (In The Fog) is obviously a very personal record. It’s a lo-fi slow burn that moves at its own pace with subtle grinding synth lines, keyboards and other effects. Dewsnup uses a whisper-pop vocal style that is defined as an emphasis on breaths and silent sibilant consonants like P’s, K’s and T’s at times making his vocals  more of a breathy hiss that blends into the instrumentation. At first listen to A Poison Tree (In The Fog) is a dreamy, hallucinatory trippy vibe that wraps around you like a light blanket on a rainy summer day. However, on a second listening with the lyric sheet in hand, A Poison Tree (In The Fog) hits like a tsunami. 

On the first track “That Old Skeleton Barn (In The Fog),” Dewsnup tells the story of a barn that burnt down when he was a kid. “They told me that all the skeletons / Had risen up from the dead” Dewsnup sings, “But they burnt them down / As if they never lived / So this old guitar / Will show you what they did.” Burning down is a metaphor for erasing. A skeletal system is the wood framing of a house, and a skeleton is the frame work of the body. This is the story that Dewsnup sets out to tell on this beautiful and sad record.

The track “My Last Memory (In The Fog)” opens up Dewsnup’s own personal mental health. “I see a shadow off in the distance / Watching me closely / Then it starts to chase me / I close my eyes like I always do / Cause I still get scared / I know it’s not what I’m supposed to do / I still have meaning / But meaning brings pain / My back hits the floor / My mind goes on racing.”

Dewsnup turns depression into poetry and it hits like a gut punch. “But the shadow won’t fade away,” Dewsnup continues, “And my spirit is dying everyday / I’ll pack it up alone again / A thousand fans, and still I feel nothing / Nothing at all.” Dewsnup finishes the track with another gut punch: “I wake up in the morning / And I still feel tired / I want to feel human / And show the world my love.”

The Poison Tree (In The Fog) is a record of love and bravery at an elite level, from an artist not so comfortable, but standing just the same—in the exact right place where Dewsnup’s feet are at, knowing it’s the place Dewsnup needs to be.

Only 1.4% of college soccer players are offered professional contracts. In the UK, just 180 of 1.5 million youth footballers are likely to make it to the Premier League—a success rate of 0.012%. This shows the bravery of Jeff Dewsnup; He stepped away from an unbelievably amazing opportunity to confront his mental health in a country where 40% of men never talk about it. The Poison Tree (In The Fog) will change, consume and comfort you. Seek this record out. –Russ Holsten
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