Dum Dum Girls – Jail La La
Nowt to do with this, but can I just point out how naffed off I am that no-one got my tremendous joke here?…
[Video][Website]
[6.62]
Alfred Soto: Nice clatter and drone, recorded by a young woman with too much Rough Trade vinyl stacked in her closet and too smart to affect boredom her first time out. It’s a good sign that she’s singing about/to a young woman trapped and covered in shit. Now that she’s defined the limitations she’s gotta project past them.
[7]
Martin Skidmore: My oldest friend’s favourite band ever was Dolly Mixture, so I bet he’d love this lot, who have a similar ultra-lo-fi old girl-group sound. Sadly, there isn’t enough of a tune and the singing is too flattened and affectless to do much for me, and I can’t see sounding as if you recorded a single in a barrel as a good thing.
[4]
Iain Mew: The fuzz seems pervasive first go, but it soon parts to reveal a sharp, taut song. It has no real need to shy away, then, except perhaps that it would miss the beguiling way the harmonies remain a little clouded by the fog, as if the call for help is coming from a great distance. Neat stuff, though as far as instant pop thrills go, it’s still not quite up there with their near namesakes’ “Can’t Get You Out of My Thoughts”.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: This song would probably sound better if its fadeaways didn’t make it seem embarrassed about having a melody. But at least it has a melody, and a pretty one. And it’s proud of its la-la-las. Actually, I hear a pinch of Raincoats — though that may just be because I didn’t pay much attention to less ingenious precedents that came out of, say, Olympia, Washington in between.
[6]
Ian Mathers: The chorus was a nice surprise; honestly, the demands of this kind of song are low enough they could have gotten away with just the low-key rumble of the beginning. It’s a pretty good chorus too, enough to elevate “Jail La La” over most of its competition in the increasingly crowded neo/retro garage field.
[7]
John Seroff: Grungy, enjoyable lo-fi girlpop that’s got enough backbone to not sound like a bald knockoff and smart enough not to overstay its welcome. Nice scopitone-style video too. “Jail La La” may lack the little bit of oomph necessary to really stick around, but maybe it’ll work better in the context of a full album? Anyways, I wouldn’t kick this out of bed for eatin’ crackers.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: One nice aftereffect of not keeping up with indie rock is that when something from that vague region does catch your ear you don’t immediately have to compare it to all the other things that came out recently that sound like it, you can just enjoy it for what it is: a garagey girl-group stomp in the vein of the Luv’d Ones, only with cuter vocals.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Sunny retro-pop after a bottle or two of wine, an eyes-closed sprint through some unknown alley and a knife fight. Vocalist Dee Dee slips into ’60s mannerisms as if they’re the only sounds she can hear over the haze in her head. And it works well enough that you can’t tell whether that shit-covered, high-as-a-kite woman is a cellmate or the speaker herself. If only the morning after really sounded like this.
[8]