On Visalia, the third studio album from Tobias the Owl, Elijah Dhavvan wraps his most confessional, vulnerable lyricism to date in shimmering, ethereal indie rock. A somber reflection on his journey from homeless dropout to physician, cancer survivor, and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, the record is marked by a dramatically different ethos towards composition and a profound change in thematic content.
The album title, “Visalia” is taken from the end of Dhavvan’s journey. “I had been hitchhiking westward, when I came to the town of Visalia,” he says. “That was a sentinel moment for me, and it felt like the singular moment when I decided that I had suffered enough, and that I didn’t want to go on living in that degree of poverty.”
Some of Tobias the Owl’s songs have been featured in television and film and at Starbucks stores worldwide, and in 2014, Dhavvan won a Toronto Independent Music Award for best singer/songwriter in his hometown. IndieAcoustic.com named A Safe Harbor for Wayward Echoes the Best Acoustic Ensemble Album of 2018. The Independent Acoustic Music Awards, Independent Music Awards, and the New Song Music Competition, all gave the record nominations in several categories. Tobias the Owl’s songs have been covered by Jonah Tolchin and John McAuley of Deer Tick.
