Albums : Dum Dum Girls : Too True
Listen To Dum Dum Girls : Too True
Who is Dum Dum Girls?
Dum Dum Girls is an American rock band, formed in 2008. It began as the bedroom recording project of lead singer and songwriter Dee Dee Penny (aka Kristin Welchez) in Los Angeles. She is currently based in New York City. The name is a double homage to The Vaselines' album Dum Dum and the Iggy Pop song "Dum Dum Boys".
Dee Dee's first release under the Dum Dum Girls moniker was a five-song CDr on her own label, Zoo Music, in late 2008. It was followed by an EP on Captured Tracks and a 7" on HoZac She quickly gained attention with these releases and signed to Sub Pop in July 2009.
Dum Dum Girls' debut album, I Will Be, was released in March 2010 and was well-received by critics. Pitchfork described the songs as "genuine earworms, both unfailingly hip and often wonderfully associative". Penny produced the record with Richard Gottehrer, who had previously worked with Richard Hell, Blondie, The Go-Gos, and The Raveonettes. Gottehrer also co-wrote the early 1960s hit songs "My Boyfriend’s Back" and "I Want Candy". The record included guest guitarists Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs on "Yours Alone," Dee Dee's husband Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles on "Blank Girl," and Andrew Miller on multiple tracks. The cover of the album featured a college snapshot of Penny's mother, who died from cancer in 2010. After its release, she assembled a touring band, and their first shows were in support of Girls.
In 2011, the band released the He Gets Me High EP, which included a cover of "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by The Smiths. This record marked the addition of Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes to the production team, which Dee Dee has kept intact.
Second album Only in Dreams was released in September 2011, featuring the singles "Coming Down" and "Bedroom Eyes," the latter of which Dum Dum Girls performed on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. This album was the only Dum Dum Girls recording to feature the full band.
In September 2012, the EP End of Daze was released, preceded by the single "Lord Knows" on July 31, 2012, which Pitchfork awarded "Best New Track". The EP received "Best New Music" from Pitchfork as well.
Dee Dee has also collaborated on a number of musical projects. As The Mayfair Set, a duo with Mike Sniper of Blank Dogs, she released an eponymous single followed by the Young One 12" EP, both in 2009. She and Tamaryn released a cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain song "Teenage Lust" in 2011 under the name Les Demoniaques. Also that year, Dee Dee, Sniper and of J.B. Townsend of Crystal Stilts recorded a one-sided 7" single, "Faraway Friend," under the name Zodiacs, which was given away via Captured Tracks mailorder. Most recently, Dee Dee and her husband released a 2013 single, "Something That Feels Bad Is Something That Feels Good," as Haunted Hearts. In 2013, Dee Dee composed the opening theme for the animated series Beware the Batman.
On October 31, 2013, Dum Dum Girls announced the third full-length album Too True, set for release on January 28, 2014 and featuring the single "Lost Boys & Girls Club", whose video premiered with H&M on October 31, 2013. For this album, Dee Dee Penny cited Suede, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Madonna, and The Stone Roses as her influences.
Too True Review
To paraphrase French author Paul Valery, all literature is written in common sense, except for that of Arthur Rimbaud. The decadent French poet — irreverent, morally loose — developed works that eventually became the cornerstone for surrealism and Dadaism. Rimbaud flourished in the 19th century, but his legacy lurks where abandon, curiosity, and fervor merge within art.
This intersection leads us directly to the smoky goth pop outfit Dum Dum Girls. The Los Angeles-bred quartet, led by principal songwriter Dee Dee Penny, has consistently produced swoon-and-gloom-tinged jams. But even when she’s singing salty farewell ballads, Penny’s voice warbles with sweetness, no matter how blackened the goodbye. Dum Dum Girls’ lovely debut, I Will Be, wooed with jittery love songs back in 2010, and the next year’s Only in Dreams found Penny’s then-solo project billowing into a full dream pop outfit.
The group’s third studio record, Too True, finds Penny sharpening her approach to songwriting and probing the concept of abandon into aesthetic. Specifically, she draws from two key periods that celebrated abandon within art — 19th century French poetry and the clang-and-clamor synth revolution that sprawled into dream pop, industrial sounds, and goth iconography in the 1980s — in order to craft a new vision for herself and her band. Dee Dee Penny wears her heart on one sleeve and her influences on the other, and Too True is translucent with both.
In an open letter via her label Sub Pop, Penny outlines how “time, intention, and fervor” drove her to develop Too True. Enlisting the production capabilities of seasoned songwriter Richard Gottehrer (who penned none other than “I Want Candy”) and The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner, Too True is rooted in the careful interplay of human and machine, synthesizer and delay pedal, vocals and echoes. The influence is apparent on the shimmying “Rimbaud Eyes”, invoking a muse through dark rhythms. Pop music has the potential for both blackness and bubblegum, and Penny aims to extract every one of its ominous capabilities.
Forever the romantic, Penny kicks off Too True with, “I belong to the cult of love.” The focal point of Penny’s affections have traditionally addressed a “he,” presumably husband and occasional collaborator Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles. On Too True, the gendered focus shifts, as Penny repeatedly both beckons and addresses a “she.” Given Penny’s poignant claim that her voice was destroyed — “my once infallible instrument to a pale spectre of its former self” — the invocation of that “she” may very well be a cathartic gesture, as Penny sheds a former self and moves forward into who she is becoming.
Penny recognizes, accepts, and moves beyond wistfulness to embracing the possibility of the open road at this point in her career. “There’s no particular place we are going, but we’re going,” she affirms on “Lost Boys and Girls Club”, plucking at the gauzy reverb of late ’80s Lush records. Still, there’s work to be done in order to give herself over to chance. On title track “Too True to Be Good”, Penny is still wrestling with her phantoms. “It’s hard to outrun the devil from behind,” she admits.
The goth pop spirit of Siouxsie Sioux fittingly shadows this somber record, but Penny simply doesn’t possess the same cataclysmic presence as The Banshees’ volatile singer. A certain caustic texture is missing here for Penny to take full command, perhaps shed for the taut studio arrangements. The punchy Too True sheds the woozy energy that made the achy bedroom jangles of debut I Will Be feel so immediate, although it’s difficult to place the two records side by side — Dum Dum Girls have evolved so far at this point, they might as well be a different band.
Still, a familiar shroud overcasts the ghoulish synths and fuzzy tambourines of “Evil Bloom”, and Penny manages to pull one hell of a line out of her studded leather jacket sleeve on “Lost Boys and Girls Club” (“Your eyes are black exes of hate and hexes”). The gossamer veils of ’80s dream pop, offering a sweet way to talk about sadness, are cast aside for more strobes, synthesizers, and Siouxsie. While the synth-happy instrumentation is laid on perhaps a little thick, the effort offers a handful of pop gems in return. “In the Wake of You” might be one of the catchiest songs about being completely devastated by someone, and the burning “Are You Okay” is instant hum material.
But Dum Dum Girls have a special penchant for concluding their records on poignant notes. During closing track “Trouble Is My Name”, Penny admits that despite her best efforts otherwise, she can never escape trouble completely. Old habits die hard, and Too True explores the implications of trying — and perhaps failing — to give yourself over to the uncertainty of the future.
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