Sonically and lyrically, Daze does Dreams one better by blowing personal sorrow up to a mythic scale.įrom "Mine Tonight" to the wonderfully brooding cover of Scottish new wave duo's Strawberry Switchblade's "Trees and Flowers" ("I hate the trees and I hate the flowers, and I hate the buildings, the way they tower over me"), there's not a weak song in the bunch. The lush, cavernous sonics produced by loyal Dum Dum Girls collaborators Richard Gottehrer and Sune Rose Wagner echo this step forward, too. Tears fall "from desert eyes," home is "a sweet prison," and both Satan and Icarus make cameo appearances. But while many of the songs on Dreams painted grief with a palette of simple descriptors and easy rhymes ("There's nothing to say/ At the end of the day/ I'm wasting away"), Daze expresses these emotions with more depth. Like Only in Dreams, Daze is an exploration of the feelings triggered by the recent death of Dee Dee's mother.
"I've dreamed a death/ It's mine tonight," Dee Dee drawls on the opener "Mine Tonight", which smolders slowly and purposefully for a minute and a half before bursting into a panoramic blaze.
Now, on End of Daze, they're now penning some dark gems of their own. Sandy's kick drum towered 10-stories high and Dee Dee sold the track's jet-black drama, uttering her chilling delivery of "I want to see people and I want to see life" like a member of the walking dead. Bold is the band that thinks it can bring something new to the song that's launched a million mascara tears, but Dum Dum Girls pulled it off in grand style. It was a collection of cheery, upbeat songs about infatuation, except for the closing track - a cover of the Smiths classic "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". Last year's terrific, four-song He Gets Me High EP introduced a newfound Chrissie Hynde-like depth to Dee Dee's voice and new-car glimmer to the Girls' formerly lo-fi sound. This isn't the first time an EP has marked a turning point in the Dum Dum Girls' run. Unhurried but not a beat too long, End of Daze is a confident and comprehensive showcase for everything Dum Dum Girls do well, from luxuriant, moody ballads to driving, melodic guitar pop- and after 18 minutes, it punches the time clock like somebody who just declared checkmate: Your move, every other band trying to sound like this. Though they've turned into a versatile band comfortable in an array of styles, their roots are in garage rock, a sound that has a long history of mining the potential of brevity: It's a genre built on a foundation of singles, whose holy text is aptly titled "Nuggets", and whose philosophy is summarized by a song that went "I hope I die before I get old." Though Dum Dum Girls' latest EP, End of Daze, has a handful of gothic influences, its all-killer-no-filler concision feels like a tribute to the spirit that they've have been riffing on since their debut, I Will Be. The album was re-issed on clear vinyl for Record Store Day in 2018.It makes sense that Dum Dum Girls thrive in short form. "Teenage Superstars" had already been featured on their 1988 EP Dying for It. Other songs recorded during the Dum-Dum sessions include "Bitch", "Dying For It (The Blues)" and "Let's Get Ugly". The musicians contributing the synthesized strings to "Slushy" and the Indian raga sounds to "Lovecraft" have not been publicly identified. The album was produced by the band and Jamie Watson, and was included in its entirety for their career retrospective The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History. It was recorded at Chamber Studios, Edinburgh, between December 1988 and January 1989.
The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete Historyĭum-Dum is the first full-length album by the alternative rock band The Vaselines, released in 1989.
0 kommentar(er)
