As a member of the web-savvy funk band Vulfpeck, the Los Angeles songwriter Joey Dosik is usually off to the side playing saxophone or keyboard. But in a recent YouTube video, the group gathers around Dosik and performs one of his songs, a throwback soul track called “Running Away.” Like many of Vulfpeck’s popular studio clips, the performance is garnished with a dose of music-nerd excitement, this time in the form of a pair of cameos from noted session drummer James Gadson (Bill Withers, Quincy Jones) and guitarist David T. Walker (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye). The dream-team lineup isn’t wasted on Dosik’s song. They take his self-absorbed fantasy that someone out there is thinking of him and turn it into something gorgeous.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the version of “Running Away” you’ll hear on Dosik’s new Game Winner EP, an expanded re-packaging of his 2016 release of the same name. Instead, you’ll find two others. The official “Running Away” is a subdued hum, a victim of production that turns a sweet song into something quaint and soulless. The alternate mix, with just Dosik’s buttery voice and muted drum and bass tracks, splits the difference; the session is so minimal that it reads like a songwriter’s demo and vocal audition in one. To be sure, Dosik has written a very good song, but he doesn’t quite seem sure of what to do with it.
Game Winner has 10 tracks, but only three full original songs. The rest are alternate versions and plodding piano interludes to pad out the EP’s tenuous concept: It’s a set of romantic sketches filtered through a vague basketball metaphor. On the gospel-indebted title track, Dosik sings, “Give me the ball/I’ll hit the game winner/Oh take a chance on me,” wrestling the corniness out of the gesture simply by sounding so genuine. His voice has a serene, plaintive quality. Light as it is, his singing does the heavy lifting throughout.
More than anything, the EP casts Dosik as a deeply mellow writer and performer. With its gentle guitar fingerpicking and twinkling piano riffs, “Competitive Streak” is a blue-eyed soul track that, if you tilt your head, casts Dosik suddenly and creatively as a new-school James Taylor. He’s similarly economical in his writing and has a chipper, pattering melody for even the downest moments. “Couldn’t possibly blame me/More than I blame myself,” he sings. Later on the same song, though, his idée fixe gets the best of him, when he awkwardly blurts out a reference to Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The final track on the EP’s original tracklist is Game Winner’s most refreshing moment. Predictably, it’s a riff, the remix to “Game Winner.” Dosik uses the more sensual revamp to finally lighten up. “Sit back and enjoy a piece of the remix,” he sings, stepping out of the stuffiness of the previous version. Dosik got his start as a jazz musician, and maybe that’s where he got his inclination to iterate on a good piece. But he could stand to loosen up a little and take risks earlier in the game.
