The Dum Dum Girls are probably the best thing in ripped black tights since Claire Danes. Formed in late 2008 and soon after landing a signing to Sub Pop, these L.A. beach bums have found their way to the top of the surfy lo-fi movement practically overnight. In fact, the L.A. Times went so far as to dub the Dum Dum Girls as part of their “Queens of L.A. lo-fi.” As a throne shared with Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast and Piper Kaplan of Pearl Harbor, this coronation is nothing to scoff at. The Dum Dums are named ambiguously after an Iggy Pop song and a Vaselines album. While these influences are attitudinal components of the girls’ music, they also bring the noise pop scuzz of the Jesus & Mary Chain and the bubble gum punk rock progressions of the Ramones.  Put the whole kit and kaboodle through an echoing tube amp and a lifetime of sunburns and you’re getting close to the Dum Dum Girls formula, which they have coined their own term to describe: “blissed-out buzzsaw.”

The debut album, I Will Be (Sub Pop) was produced by Richard Gottehrer, whose resume includes Blondie, The Go Gos and more recently the Raveonettes. The Dum Dums fit perfectly into this female punk rock lineage, with their own flair of cool and psychedelia. To those unaware, it should also come as little surprise that occasional drummer, Frankie Rose, was a former member of the Vivian Girls, a Brooklyn all-girl lo-fi outfit that pioneered a similar revival in early 2008.  She also spent time drumming with the Crystal Stilts and recently launched a solo project, Frankie Rose and the Outs, but that’s a story for another time. The Dum Dums take these past and contemporary comparisons and add echoing vocals and guitars throughout. While their music certainly has a garage rock element to it, its an open garage that faces westward to the not-so-distant Pacific.

The songs swirl and sparkle with the mindlessness of a burnt out summer. Many of the tracks such as the single, “Jail La La”, are simply punk rock- power chords, straight beats, basic song structure, short duration and highly melodic choruses. “It Only Takes One Night” and “I Will Be” smack you like double overhead waves; hollow, haunting and pressing. The drums on these songs are recorded with such low fidelity that the snare hits sound more like cap guns. The druggier songs on the album, such as “Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout,” carry a touch of Grace Slick.  There are also a handful of heartbreak slowdowns like “Rest of Our Lives” and “Baby Don’t Go” which make The Dum Dum Girls’ hardened hearts vulnerable for love. The magic of this album is found in its flow of summery ups and downs, like the rising and falling sets of a swell. The album also has a few guest appearances- Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner plays on “Yours Alone” and Crocodiles’ Brandon Welchez sings and plays guitar on the duet “Blank Girl.”

Lyrically speaking the group falls into a department we recently described in our review of She & Him. While musically lead singer, Dee Dee, and Zooey Deschanel are distant, there is a common simplicity and nostalgia shared in their stories. Their adolescent subjects of love draw easy parallels, such as on “Yours Alone” on which Dee Dee confesses, “Met him at the school yard/five years old/told him I’d love him/’til I’m cold.” However, while Zooey’s presentation recalls a polka dot dressed prom queen, Dee Dee’s school yard buzzes and roars with leather jackets, cigarettes and motorcycle rides to make out under the bridge. On the title track, “I Will Be,” Dee Dee cries out, “If she somehow beats me/Gets to the top before me/I can’t deny how angry I will be.” Magnified by the vocal recording at a peaking level during these moments, I for one don’t want to be the one in Dee Dee’s path. This feisty competitiveness is also found on “Everybody’s Out” on which she repeats the phrase “My baby’s better than you” for most of the song,  fragmented only by Dick Dale like guitar riffs.

On the band’s Sub Pop profile, Dee Dee reflects on her experience of living in L.A., “And it’s really bizarre living in Southern California. It’s that total stereotype of being super-laidback, this ‘everything’s perfect’ vibe. But you’re miserable in the sun because you’re stuck. Like, it’s so perfect that it’s overwhelming and depressing.” Likewise goes their music. While the Dum Dums have an unmistakable sunniness on this album, the apathy surrounding it colors the music distraught and desperate at times. This feeling is best captured on “Baby Don’t Go,” a fantastic bummer like a bittersweet, warm evening party in late August, as school beckons to return. Its with these mixed emotions, just like fleeting youth, that I Will Be flies by.

- matthew hunt

I have never quite known how to talk about Frank Black without attempting to tell the story of all modern music- to try to explain the Pixies to someone who has never heard them approaches the absurd. Although I think that’s the way they always wanted it. It’s a good thing you, reader, have this handy embedded music player next to this review. I don’t have to tell you how great Black Francis is, you can experience the album while I merely attempt to comment and share my own impressions. I will not attempt to impart upon you the import of Frank Black or The Pixies in general here in this brief discussion. You can (and should) figure that out on your own time.

The first thing you should be noticing is how much Black Francis loves sex. Seems the dude can’t get enough of the stuff. Nonstoperotik is exactly what it claims – a beginning-to-end freight-train-speed exploration and celebration of all the elements of sex that Black Francis could possibly fit on one album. As the Pixies discusses all of modern music, so does Nonstoperotik address a history of human sexuality. It reminds me, in that regard, of both Foucault’s “A History…” – only accessible, and Beck’s “Midnight Vultures”- only good. Francis discusses the loss of virginity (“Wheels” – “C’mon wheels, make this boy a man”), cunnilingus (“When I Go Down On You” – you get the picture on this one), and just straight hard banging (“Nonstoperotik” – “Now I cannot hide all this tension/ I want to be inside that’s my intention/ inside of you/ all the way/ all the way/ every way”). This is a very sexy album, and it just happens to discuss nothing but sex the whole time.

Musically, this album is what you would expect from Black Francis – roots Americana played on rough and raw guitars, with destructive deconstructions thrown in hither and thither, but never fully violating the pure pop sensibility of the structure. It is a masterfully crafted album, making sense front to back, telling a story and progressing musically while never betraying continuity with a standout single or disjointed “experiment track.” The album builds upon itself wonderfully, hitting a fever pace around “Corrina” and “Six Legged Man” then pumping the breaks on “Wild Son” -while maintaining intensity- then transitioning smoothly into the brooding, dripping, “When I Go Down on You.” There is no substitute, in this era of the Youtube single and individual track downloads, for a well-crafted album – a piece of art that is more than the sum of its parts. Nonstoperotik is certainly that.

It goes without saying that Black Francis’ band is tight as hell, the mastering is flawless, the composition is beautiful, and the tones achieved by the guitars are sublime. Francis himself ranges well vocally, crooning at times, begging at others, and slipping into a wonderful falsetto on finale “Cinema Star” – one of my favorite tracks, especially the nervous bridge leading into the triumphant and odd chorus. This is ultimately followed by a wailing, melter of a solo- guitar notes screeching out in wonderful unbridled rock and roll ecstasy, an orgasm fitting for an album that keeps you on sexual edge for 36 minutes before climax. “Cinema Star” then falls back on a fading, exultant, sated grand piano to cuddle you to the end.

- nicholas mott

There has recently been a series of indie rock artists who have revived the Phil Spector and Beach Boys style of overwhelming harmonies, stacking them on top of and complimenting each other to form a tidal wave of beautiful sound. But there is a dark yet oddly similar musical approach also returning to prevalence, like Brian Wilson’s equally cunning but crooked little brother. The style takes that idea of blissfully stacked waves of consonance, and begins to stagger them so that these waves don’t align perfectly, resulting instead in overwhelming dissonance. The hugeness of this noise instead of forcing joyous tears, draws blood from your ears and a druggy disorientation. Paying homage to this sound, Oslo rockers Serena Maneesh return with a noisy sophomore album titled S-M 2: Abyss in B-Minor (4AD), with nearly five years elapsed since their acclaimed self-titled debut. With a band name loosely translated from Norwegian as “the veil around the stage,” Serena Maneesh channels the work of My Bloody Valentine who mastered this control of adjacent, conflicting frequencies.  The aforementioned “veil” is meant to refer to a downpour of sound, like the maxed out experience that Kevin Shields of MBV sought to create on Loveless. Though Serena Maneesh’s return is a groovier one than this ruckus talk may lead you to believe.

From the beginning of the album Abyss in B-Minor sets this precedent of groove, a hard one as it may be. On the opener, “Ayisha Abyss,” tensions run high with an exhilarating bass line while ghostly synth chugs along with intense swells that could easily be confused as percussion. The megaphone-recorded spoken words are indistinguishable and pleading.  This transitions nicely into “I Just Want to See Your Face,” which strips back some of the disorganization to introduce a steady rhythm and the vocals of Hilma Nikolaisen, who sounds frighteningly similar to Bilinda Butcher of MBV. This balance of chaos and melody, rock and dance, is prevalent throughout the album. As you might expect, keeping this scale can make the album sound disconnected at times, on top of its disorderly intentions.

While its clear who these Norwegian rockers are paying tribute to, the album comparatively has a much more distinct live feel to it. The drum recordings are crisp and played purely instead of being heavily sampled. Tracks like “Blow Yr Brains in the Morning Rain” offer the neo-psychadelic rock of contemporaries like Brian Jonestown Massacre, also serving as the most direct extension of the prior album. The guitars are heavily filtered and completely wah-wahed out. Meanwhile, “D.i.w.s.w.t.t.d, ” feels more like a head nod with its acid jazz hand drum beat and flutes accents than it does a head bang with lumbering guitars. But Abyss does achieve a higher level of discomfort on tracks like “Reprobate!” While this is the album’s most consistent and repetitive melody, it is shredded apart by reverse delay guitar effects, leading the song into the so-called “abyss”. The album finds further dynamic in a Percoset-level of warm and slow on “Melody for Jaana,” a dampened and dreamy vocal duet accompanied by steadily rumbling distortion. Here, as well as on “Honeyjinx,” there is a potent taste of Sonic Youth.

In its totality, Abyss in B-Minor at times takes aim at an uncomfortable bigness, but more often the album is about the current of groove and melody exposed behind its veil. While MBV’s toppling, incongruent frequencies and dissonant texture is explored, its often supported by jazzy rhythms. The membrane between rock and dance is thin. Ultimately, while Abyss can be derivative, it is certainly full of refreshing moments.

- matthew hunt