Jay Watson isn’t shy about self-deprecation. His recent string of albums as GUM have functioned as billboards for his own diffidence: Glamorous Damage, Flash in the Pan, and now, The Underdog. Perhaps such humility is a natural byproduct when you’re a silent partner in both Australia’s most famous psychedelic rock band and its most rambunctious, while trying to carve out space as a solo artist beyond their long shadows. By Watson’s own admission, GUM’s past records effectively served as storing houses for whatever ideas are bouncing around his head when he’s not playing with his other bands. But the encouraging evolution of the project suggests that Watson may not be able to keep up the false-modesty act for much longer.
The Underdog is built from the same toolkit as GUM’s previous releases—psychedelia, prog, ‘70s soft rock, disco, electro—but smooths out their pastiche quality and dials down the eccentricity to create a more seamless song cycle. According to Watson, The Underdog is a quasi-concept album that presents a dusk-to-dawn snapshot of his life. The passage of time isn’t so much marked by specific events as impressionistic shifts in mood, where the promise of the night gives way to intense wee-hours introspection.
As per GUM tradition, the album opens with a brief instrumental teaser—in this case, a sun-beamed synth aria—however, the fact Watson actually titled this one “Introduction” reinforces the greater attention to structure and sequencing in effect here. It leads us right into the album’s title track/theme song, a shot of swaggering cosmic funk where Watson throws down his mission statement: “Always go for the underdog!” His declaration is instantly undercut by a rejoinder that’s perfectly Lennon-esque in both sound and cynical spirit: “Someone’s always in the way/And that’s not gonna change.”
It’s tempting to read that exchange as a comment on Watson’s relatively humble standing next to Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker and the challenges of establishing GUM’s own identity. At times, it’s impossible to ignore the, ahem, under-Currents flowing through The Underdog: the lo-fi ballad “After All (From the Sun)” blossoms into a bass-synth bounce that will have you mentally transposing the woozy chorus refrain to “’Cause I’m a Man,” while the soft-focus intro of “The Blue Marble” is upended by a booming break that could pass for a pitch-shifted remix of “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.” But the big difference this time is that GUM no longer sounds like the idiosyncratic, lo-tech offshoot of Tame Impala: In both its more luxuriant production and more emotionally resonant songwriting, The Underdog finds Watson pursuing his own widescreen vision of lonerism.
Following a playful opening stretch, The Underdog reveals its wounded core during its more absorbing second act, where Watson slips into an insomniac’s fever dream wracked with anxiety and self-doubt. “Rehearsed in a Dream” is a dark-night-of-the-soul reckoning embedded in a hazy fog of Floydian psych and quiet-storm R&B, and that encroaching sense of existential dread peaks on the gripping “Trying My Best,” a self-help mantra amplified by the sort of dramatic, throbbing synths you hear on a ’70s European sci-fi-flick soundtrack. But with the neon-tinted disco of “The Fear,” Watson opts for the most effective therapy: losing your mind at the club. “I’ve got the fear!” he repeats, and the directive is clear: sing along if you know the words—or, better yet, tremble uncontrollably if you’re all too familiar with the feeling.
