Dum Dum Girls – I Will Be

Author

Jade Nobbs

Published

Tuesday 25th May

Sub Pop

The virtues of this gift of a record are almost too many to enumerate. It suffices to say that, within the space of less than half an hour, the listener is treated to a veritable genealogy of cool feminine pop/rock, with gestures toward everything from 60s girl groups the Angels and the Shirelles, legendary post-punk outfits such as the Runaways and Blondie, 90s grrl rock outlaws Bikini Kill and ladygaze heroes Lush, as well as more recent milkbar revisionists the Raveonettes. It is, in other words, a salubrious compendium of retro girl-pop awesomeness.

The spatio-temporal crunch that this record inspires within the brain is made more comprehensible when one understands it was produced by milkbar pop legend Richard Gottehrer, writer of the 60s girl group hit “My Boyfriend’s Back” for the Angels, and also “I Want Candy,” which Gotterhrer originally recorded with his group The Strangeloves in 1965, but was also famously covered in the early 80s by Bow Wow Wow. Amongst his other accomplishments, Gottehrer produced Blondie’s debut album in 1976 and more recently lent his production finesse to the Raveonettes’ debut album in 2003. Therein lies the stately bedrock of this record’s impeccable retro-audiophilic credentials, and it is therefore not surprising that this album seems to find the perfect balance between lo-fi punk/shoegaze texture and pretty wall-of-sound-pop space and sparkle.

But there is also some fine reverential songwriting here as well. Lead singer and songwriter Dee Dee seems to have fully assimilated the entire genealogy of fashionable girl pop from the last 50 years, and has somehow found the common threads linking them all together in her (self-proclaimed) sonic template of
“blissed-out buzz saw.” As I understand it, this seems to combine the rabid desperation of fabricated 1960s teenage lust with the detached insouciance and alienation of 90s shoegaze indifference, forming a recombinatory pop aesthetic that is, at least to this reviewer’s ears, completely essential. There’s even a cover of a Sonny and Cher tune closing out the album, which is particularly sweet, spacious and minimal.

I won’t bother to analyse individual songs, as they are driven more by an attention to formula than a will to originality. But it is the conviction with which they are delivered that makes all the difference. Undoubtedly one of the best pop records released so far this year, and essential listening for lovers of music history. And, well, lovers in general.