Today’s Sounds: Dum Dum Girls

Record:

Dum Dum Girls, End of Daze EP (Sub Pop)

 
The shimmering garage rock of this L.A. band’s debut album I Will Be made a deep impression on me. Seeing them live a couple of times, at Il Motore last winter and more recently at Osheaga, cemented my feeling that they’re brilliant ambassadors for that classic cross-section of girl group* and garage rock. (*That they’re an all-girl group is irrelevant — granted, dudes would not look good in those tights. One of my favourite bands of the moment, the Drums, is a boy band that works the girl group angle. So to clarify, I refer to the Motown and Motown-adjacent girl group style.)

I wasn’t alone, however, in finding Dum Dum Girls’ follow-up record, Only in Dreams, a little too clean. Remember when the Shins dropped the reverb on their second record? Big mistake. But Dum Dum Girls shed a lot more weight than the Shins did, dispensing with much of the fuzz that made I Will Be bristle. The actual songs, and the new depth and clarity of singer Dee Dee’s voice (Chrissie Hynde styles), remained compelling, and the band’s choices in the studio had little impact on the live show.

But get a load of this. It’s hardly the band’s first foray into short-form — they’ve released a number of singles, and the kind of underwhelming He Gets Me High EP last year (their Smiths cover didn’t really cut it for me). But it’s their best, bearing an excellent set of tunes and a sound that seems to bridge that of their two LPs.

“Mine Tonight” is a charged dirge, or a dark mantra perhaps; “I Got Nothing” kicks up the rock ’n’ roll to drive a stake into your heart with some timeless saddo lyrics about unrequited love; “Trees and Flowers”  is a hymn for the depressed; “Lord Knows” rolls out the relationship melancholy as an elaborate seduction; “Season in Hell” is another pop tune you’ll want to twist to — but be warned that the wealth of classic melodies and chord progressions will leave you as mangled as a pretzel, swooning on the floor.

Co-produced by little-known music legend Richard Gottehrer and the Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner, this EP suggests that Dum Dum Girls are on track to totally outshine not only their own back catalogue, but the latter’s band (who recently released Observator).
 

Track:

The Kings Dead, “Hennessy at Cookouts”

If the title sounds like something out of a Chappelle sketch… is that so bad? Formerly known as the Dean’s List, this Boston hip hop act’s new mixtape is called Jerusalem. Long live the king.
 

 

Video:

Saint Lou Lou, “Maybe You”

These Swedish twins, recently signed to Kitsuné, present a rainy-day love song, which, together with gorgeous B&W imagery of the world’s saddest threesome, can be pinned on the ’80s-geist somewhere between American Psycho and Godley & Creme.