The Dreadful Return of Johnny Craig to DGD

Dance Gavin Dance ranks as my all-time favorite post-hardcore band, and one of my all-time favorites overall. And this extreme love that I have for DGD came through Kurt Travis. Prior, I had only purchased a few songs from their first album Downtown Battle Mountain. I liked them, I liked Johnny Craig, but not enough to really care enough to invest in or even care enough to get a full album. Kurt Travis changed that. Not only were his vocals better than Craig's and some of the best in a post-hardcore band (or any, really) that I had had the pleasure of listening to, but also he brought a stylistic shift to the band. He brought more experimentation, he brought some funk even. Just listen to the Don't Tell Dave on Happiness and you'll know what I mean. While they certainly distanced themselves from the rest of the genre to begin with with pleasingly technical guitar riffs, Kurt Travis distanced them even further.

And now we have the return of Johnny Craig. Sure in a fairly recent interview the band said they wouldn't consider letting him return after he left on such negative terms (drug and alcohol abuse problems, mostly), but that certainly doesn't seem to stop them from submitting to hypocrisy. As far as I am concerned, Craig had his time with the band and he blew it. End of story. Kurt Travis proved to be a stellar replacement, and now they've asked him to step down to allow the return of Johnny Craig. It's completely outrageous.

The real killer is the reported title of the new album they're currently working on. Wait for it....Downtown Battle Mountain 2!!! If this isn't a sure sign that Johnny Craig's return means regression, please let me know what is. Johnny Craig says that he hopes for it to be a combination of the old and the new, but he has to be joking when they're titling it Downtown Battle Mountain 2. That demonstrates to me a much stronger desire to return to the original sounds, and rules any sort of claim that they will retain the newer sound. If they somehow preserve the sound that Kurt Travis brought to the band I'll be overjoyed, but sadly I don't think that thats going to happen.