Dad Weed, High Time

Everyone just wants to feel OK. It’s an embarrassing but elemental truth, that even in this *gestures around wildly* apocalyptic fever dream, what we crave most is some way to simply be. On High Time, the debut from Zach Toporek’s new pop vehicle Dad Weed, the Arizona-based songwriter boldly snuggles up to big questions, sporting a sneaky, absolutely-getting-away-with-it grin on his beatific face the whole time. 

Pairing self-incisive questioning with studio pop wizardry, High Time is Zach’s finest work to date. Though technically a new project—its name born from a story in which a teenaged Toporek raided and sold his dad’s stash—High Time displays a synthesis of the pop/rock modes he explored for more than a decade under the Young Mothers banner. Assembled over the course of the last few years, it provides spins of power pop, soft rock, and country-tinged rock, suggesting that perhaps a teenaged Toporek raided his dad’s record collection too. From the woozy island time of “Having a Good Time,” to the classic power pop moves of the sui generis statement “Stoned On the Couch,” replete with All Things Must Pass-style electric guitars and Doobie worthy backup vocals, to the Toto’d out grooves of “Make A Place For My Love” and the late night blue-eyed soul of “Phone Call,” it’s clear that Toporek and his collaborators—Jess Pruitt, Rob Kroheler (fun.), Elio DeLuca, Harrison Sellers, and Wayne Whitaker—are students of classic pop ethos. 

But while the grooves on the album are comfortable, the highs remain as weighty as they are flighty. Like a primed existential comic, Toporek knows the funny lies somewhere in the hurt, or, as he puts it simply on the country-tinged rocker “Flesh Prison,” “Oh what a drag just to exist.” Sure, there’s always some sonic sugar to help the medicine go down—Toporek holds nothing back on that front, especially on the psychedelic guitar fest “Riding Off,” custom built riffage for hoisting a beer in the air at some imaginary outdoor festival of the future—but this balance of attention to the highs and the lows suggests the core of the message: you’ll feel bad sometimes, you’ll feel good sometimes. 

But for all its questions and analysis, at the core of High Time, we find Toporek feeling at home for once, in love and loved right back. That smile I was talking about earlier? You can see it on the album cover, in which Zach’s head floats in a sea of yellow, surrounded by totems of his world: the dog and cat, loved ones, tasty beverages, a lit J, the smoker doing its work on a brisket. Like McCartney’s Ram, the comfort and safety of home fuels Toporek’s playfulness. 
“I’ve been thinking about us for so long,” Toporek sings, his voice rich with fidelity in more than one way, on the exuberant “Home.” On the gorgeous Nilsson-evoking closer, “Want,” he croons,
“Am I blue because I want/Blind to what I’ve got that is so fine?” Naturally, it breaks into a New Orleans jazz reverie. At once a celebration and a hilarious interrogation, High Time is the sound of Toporek stepping into his own, exactly as he is and no worse for the wear.