I arrived fashionably late, missing the first opening band. This was by design, of course; us hip locals don’t have time to waste—especially when previous experience has taught us that the first band usually sucks just about as much as waiting around for people to show up because you got there too early like you always do. But, no waiting and no opener this time. The crowd was larger than I expected, but it’s a small room, so I easily found my friends. (I will not waste your time expounding on the novelty of going to a concert with people, or having friends willingly visit New Jersey. Let’s just say, it was a rare pleasure.) As the second opener set up, we imbibed and surveyed the crowd … fewer hipsters and under-age kids than usual—but it was a school night, and I’m sure everyone in Brooklyn who wanted to see Dum Dum Girls saw them at CMJ Fest the week before.
Crocodiles began their set, and I’m pleased to say that they didn’t suck. With guitars, bass, and drummer they delivered a solid, noisy rock sound with that first song, and hardly let up. You could call them indie, considering how the singer’s reverberating vocals and occasional yelps deviate from any rock norm. But what “indie” means is not for discussion here—in that, I don’t want to use it as a designation anymore: you’re either good and getting better, or going nowhere. (Although there are numerous examples of bands getting worse with time.) Regardless, they were good—better than the lethargic crowd would have led you to believe. But from what I recall, nothing seemed surprising from Crocodiles, except maybe for the singer’s occasional resemblance—vocally—to a young Bono, and his duet with Dee Dee, the lead singer of Dum Dum Girls (the fact that they are married, as I later learned, certainly explains the evident intimacy of their performance.)
Eventually (finally!), four women parted the crowd and took the stage. Dum Dum Girls had arrived for the final concert on their new-album-supporting tour, and hooked us all with their straight-forward, up-tempo, compact songs as well as their “riot grrrl” rock aesthetic. Well, it wasn’t just only their music; Dee Dee’s presence as a sultry, chic emo-goth front woman had its appeal. Not ones for banter, Dum Dum Girls provided a tight, well-executed set of songs from their latest and first albums—and even an “old song” from all of two years ago. I haven’t done much with my last couple years, but Dee Dee and Girls have gone from a one-woman musical project in California to a critically-acclaimed all-woman band rocking to the beat of their own style.
This would be the point where a culturally-astute essayist would turn from this specific experience to more generalized ruminations on women in contemporary music, drawing from both personal tastes (Screaming Females, Sharon Van Etten, the Luyas) and those of the general music-consuming society (Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Feist.) I'm no Klosterman, here--I don’t know how to do that, and I’m not sure that I would want to anyways. But while I may not have bought their album, Dum Dum Girls has stayed on my mind with their final songs: one, slow and haunting, and the other, which left me wondering why the singer suddenly began sounding like Morrissey—until I realized they were playing a well-executed cover of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” And I think I’ll leave you with that:
No comments:
Post a Comment