It takes a certain type of person to sacrifice their life to trash, eking out that youthful disregard for convention into a fully committed lifetime stand against the grain and existing outside of society as the years go by. You can get tattooed from head to toe and fully convert to any type of DIY ethos or you can adapt and reconfigure in the face of evolving challenges - it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to any of us when our favourite artists pulp for the latter option, particularly in today's harsh reality where making any sort of living from music is practically impossible. So why was I so crestfallen when I gave Dum Dum Girls' slick newie a spin and discovered that their biker chick fuzz rock has been scrubbed up and repackaged as radio friendly Goth pop for the new year? Did I really expect them to keep up their strike rate of catchy echo-laden Ronettes meets JAMC majesty when the music industry seems to favour more streamlined fare? Well yes I fucking did as a matter of fact - their 2010 debut blew me away and I remember thinking after the polished yet reassuringly punchy follow-up 'Only In Dreams' a year later that they were surely only a crossover hit away from genuine fame without compromise but a lot has changed since then, the post-Raveonettes boom of echoic chick rock having subsided in favour of studio-crafted chart fodder (Haim, Beach House). Dee Dee's still got an ear for a catchy tune but everything on 'Too True' sounds so sterilised that you she might as well have recorded it in a hospital - I presume she's been mainlining the early Now compilations like every other cash-hungry troubadour out there judging by the way everything is buried under shitloads of effects in an effort to recreate the smoky atmosphere of late 80s Goth but it ends up sounding more like the watered down early 90s fare of misguided veterans like House of Love and Siouxsie and the Banshees (the entire record is basically 'Kiss Them For Me' put on loop, not devoid of charm but too pristine to not wear thin pretty quickly). There's shades of her earlier flair on the choppy 'In The Wake Of You' and the Lush-esque pseudo title track 'Too True To Be Good' but the rest descends into faceless tosh, a directionless mix of La Roux, Berlin's 'Take My Breath Away' and her boyfriend's increasingly crap band Crocodiles. It's probably just enough to warrant shelling out a couple of euros but it'll go through you quicker than a cheap Chinese takeaway and leave you wanting a whole lot more before too long - give this a wide berth if you're anything other than a devotee and pick up the latest Chelsea Wolfe LP instead for a glimpse of how this shit is done properly.
Check out : the promo for 'Lost Boys and Girls Club' - looks pretty, sounds.....ok.
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