I Like Dum Dum Girls.

I like Dum Dum Girls. You might not. Taking part in the same tightrope walk between mysterioso rock n’ roll sublimity and arch, self-satisfied tedium as The Vivian Girls (who get a standing ovation for their services to the former) and Crystal Stilts (who plummet to their boring deaths whilst demonstrating the latter), I think Dum Dum Girls are going to be busy splitting audience reaction down the middle for years to come.

Currently blessed with a sense of mystery (both musical and biographical) that will likely fade once the expected hype kicks in in earnest, Dum Dum Girls would seem to be the work of one Ramones / 60s pop obsessed girl called DeeDee, recording alone in…. well, the natural cliché would be to say “in her bedroom”, only I muck about recording stuff in MY bedroom, and I’m not very good at it and don’t have much in the way of equipment or know-how, but I don’t think I could get recording quality this bad if I actively tried. So instead let’s say: Dum Dum Girls sounds like the work of one Ramones / 60s pop obsessed girl recording alone on an abandoned cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic and broadcasting the results via WWII radio equipment to a farmer in the Shetland Isles who picks it up on short-wave and dubs it onto old C90s.

Ok, it’s not quite *that bad* - the vocals on some of the tracks are pretty bright and pristine, as are some of the sugary fuzz guitar tones, whilst the Spector-on-a-budget reverb-soaked roar of the overall sound is often beautifully realised. But the instruments, in general, are a muffled, indistinguishable mess – amplifiers turned to the wall with a cheap mic on the other side of the room, whilst the weedy electronic drums are a vague presence at best, often thudding off into a different dimension entirely never to return at around the time the first chorus kicks in.

Showcasing a brand of lo-fi that’s the polar opposite of Times New Viking’s painfully distorted practice room skree, the Dum Dum Girls take on rock n’ roll is distant, incorporeal and about 50% *quieter* than most modern recordings, making these songs seem almost ghostly, like the fading half-life of what used to be a furious punk-pop rave ups.

This seems appropriate, as Space-Rock, you see, appears to be DeeDee’s other big thing. And, unlike most of the big budget neo-‘gazers, she’s smart enough to realise that the perfection of that particular craft lies not in the pedals or the careful wooosh of overdubbed noises, but in the judicious application of Mark E. Smith’s three Rs. Combined with her sinister, minimal pop sensibility, this love of lingering, detached, slow-burn repetition comes together on songs like “Put a Sock In It” to create a previously undreamed of gateway between Shadow Morton and Spacemen 3 via ‘Beat On The Brat’.

It’s the sound though that’s initially going to see a lot of listeners turning back from said gateway with an understandable cry of “fuck this boring, can’t-be-arsed demo tape shit!” But for anyone willing to loiter around for a few minutes and let this music sink in, the whole no-fi thing is also a very effective technique, encouraging a deeper listening that lets a near heartstopping sense of classical pop beauty creep out of these hazy, introverted, simplistic songs, even more surely than it did on the 3rd/4th/5th listen to the Vivian Girls album.

Listening to the myspace was my first exposure. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first; I thought the songs sounded kick-ass, and I loved the fuzz guitar and siren-song-on-the-shortwave vocals a lot, but the wrecked sound and general sense of lethargy bothered me. Nonetheless, I simultaneously felt very, very happy and a reassured to be living in a world in which the heartfelt yet uncertain DIY outings of this lonesome Ramones/60s pop/space-rock girl could be met from all sides with praise, plaudits, encouragement and excitement, rather than with scorn and dismissal. Pat yourselves on the back, 7”-trading American lo-fi scenester types, you done good!

So in spirit I was THERE, but on a musical level, I wasn’t sure I could really hang with it. Then “Baby Don’t Go” rolled around, and…. I was sold. Utterly.

Listened to the other songs again, headspace properly adjusted, and…. beautiful. I could weep.

Maybe you’ll disagree. I mean, I can’t hide the fact – I just LIKE this sort of thing. Old fashioned girl group style songs, fuzzy, droning guitars, fast punk tempos, bursts of one note noise, slow blissed out ballads, music made by girls, music that’s weird and out-of-time and lonesome, music that remembers The Ramones and their teachings. That’s me.

If I was into 80s goth, meandering, grumpy songs, thin guitars, monotone Jim Morrison whining and music made by faux-druggy boys, I’d probably be all over Crystal Stilts instead.

I guess interpretation of this kind of distant, overtly referential music is largely a matter of aesthetic preference. Maybe these bands are just leaving us a hollowed shell of noise and second hand gesture that we can fill with whatever meaning we see fit. Maybe I just project a sense of emotional honesty and feminine pop/noise catharsis onto Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls because I want to, because it makes me feel better. Sometimes I might close my eyes and pretend there’s a dragon in the room. You might laugh, but the dragon’s still really cool.

I think it’s good when rock n’ roll calls for us to flex our imaginations a little and make-believe. I like Dum Dum Girls. Do you?

Mp3s:

Yours Alone

Baby Don't Go

Not a great deal of Dum Dum Girls vinyl or plastic available at present. Myspace is here.

You can order her four song 12" for $12.99 plus shipping from there, or else fire up the ol' Hype Machine and wait for some more widely distributed records.

Labels: Dum Dum Girls, I like, pop, punk