Review: Dum Dum Girls, I Will Be

 DUM DUM GIRLS
I WILL BE
Score: One Golden Polaroid Of Your Mother in 1972
(also: A)

This is a short review. But for an A, especially a golden one, this is going to get very personal very rapidly. In essence: I actually let this album sink in, had to listen to it sixteen times (and counting), had to let myself sink into it, into an hour of golden lo-fi warmth that absolutely knocked me off my feet.  Dum Dum Girls’ I Will Be is a whole heap of sincerity, mixed in with sumptuous grit, and topped off with what can only be impossibly, permeating 60’s poppy, thrashy fun. Yes, there’s been an influx of Shangri-La-esque-throwback-scuzzy-blissful-lo-fi-crooner-girl-bands lately (Best Coast of course comes to mind), but Dum Dum Girls are leagues ahead of their peers. If you go home every night saying “but it doesn’t MEAN anything!”, Dum Dum Girls are certainly for you. The songs are simple, yes, the lyrics are straightforward, yes (at least after you make them out or speak German for Track 3, which I thankfully do, let me be your translator. Let me be your guide). You can’t listen to a single track on I Will Be without knowing that they mean what they say, what they play, how they play it––they really do. Dum Dum Girls were started by Kristin Gundred (under the stage name Dee Dee), and are now backed up by three more of the most intimidatingly “cool” ladies you can imagine. That’s Dee Dee’s mother, by the way, on the cover of the album. Do you think it looks like the cover of Contra? I like this one better. I like this a lot. This was a short review. 

Recommended Tracks: The Entire Album (OK, Ok: Blank Girl, Rest of Our Lives, Baby Don’t Go, Oh Mein Me. There.)

 

-- Fiona Hanly

Host, "Sweet 'n' Flo," Mondays 12-1 on WGTB