Welcome back to the CD Odyssey! After a very busy couple of months I’m taking a breather and having a long weekend staycation with my wonderful wife. I’ve bought some new shoes, visited my of-late neglected local pub and had a great dinner at Fiamo, Now…music!
Disc 1459 is…. Self-Titled
Artist: Dream Wife
Year of Release: 2018
What’s up with the Cover? It’s the band, but only after someone has clicked the “rotate left 90 degrees” button in their photo editor. The reason for doing this is unclear but if the intent was for it to look better, it has failed.
How I Came To Know It: I heard about Dream Wife through their 2020 release “So When You Gonna…” I liked that and decided to dig into their back catalogue. Since they only have two albums, this did not take long.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Dream Wife albums. If you are reading along, you know which two already. Of those, I rank their self-titled debut at #2.
Ratings: 3 stars
Attention lonely middle-aged men looking for mail-order brides: your search has brought you to the wrong website. Please move along. However, if you came here hoping for some high energy pop-punk music, read on, because Dream Wife’s debut album may be uneven, but one thing it does not lack is energy.
At first I found myself marveling at how much sound a three-piece rock band can make when they put their mind to it. Alice Go’s guitar is appropriately grimy, and Bella Podpadec’s bass is the secret star of the band, selflessly holding the low end down when the guitars are wailing and making the songs more interesting when the barrage lightens up. The songs have a punkish simplicity, but the arrangements come in and out of “loud” mode in a way that keeps your ear interested.
Of course, they aren’t strictly speaking a three-piece, as every one of these tracks has a drummer (different ones depending on the track), and learning this my “wow, how loud” musings were significantly muted.
Speaking of percussion, the best song on the album, “Hey! Heartbreaker” has some dope handclaps featured prominently. As everyone knows, handclaps make any rock song better, and here Dream Wife deploy them with precision and enthusiasm. The song also showcases lead vocalist Rakel Mjoll’s voice at its best. She mixes a sweet coquettish quality in the verses with an angry rocker growl in the chorus. The juxtaposition is well suited to a song where the titular character is both a) sexually desirable and b) a jerk.
There are other moments on the record, however, where Mjoll’s vocals pulled me out of the moment. She’s great when she fully commits to the emotion of the song, but there are times on otherwise good songs (e.g. “Somebody”) when the phrasing is affected without purpose. The words curling playfully where she would be better served just committing to the tune.
There are a ton of influences on the record (a common and welcome trait with modern music made by kids that have basically had digital access to almost every song ever recorded for most of their lives). There is eighties pop, alternative nineties crunch, post-punk and just plain rock and roll. I like the way the record ranges around and tries on different styles like different outfits. Sure there were times when I would have toned down the “wall of sound”, but hell, I almost always feel like that.
The album ends on a high note, with “F.U.U.” which stands for “fuck you up”. The song launches with a distorted and menacing guitar riff, then drops down to a frenetic drumbeat (and some Podpadec’s best bass work). In this case, Mjoll’s slightly disassociated and whimsical delivery makes the song even nastier, suggesting an off-handed violence with no other purpose than for the sheer thrill of it.
The record grew on me with repeat listens, which is usually a good sign. It isn’t perfect, but it’s still worth a spin or two to decide for yourself.
Best tracks: Let’s Make Out, Hey! Heartbreaker, F.U.U.
No comments:
Post a Comment