Dummy

Off the success of their debut, West Coast pop alchemists Dummy often get slipped into the net with the new wave of shoegaze that’s been glinting off the coast these days. While the band aren’t opposed to dipping into the foam from time to time, their sound goes much deeper than any pigeonhole genre. Free Energy picks up the yoke that was laid loose on Mandatory Enjoyment, urging them far deeper into the fray. An album’s album in a sea of singles, the band delights in leading the listener through a maze of haze, fuzz, scuzz, and insistent rhythms that won’t let the room sit still. The band refuses to rehash their successes or adhere to a formula, still lapping at the blurred boundaries of the late ‘80s/ early ‘90s and the scented edges of the 4AD stable, but pushing much further afield.

Tied together with some ace cameos — the cotton-cocoon of Cole Pulice, some pastoral dulcimer from Jen Powers — the album bends the band’s sound into origami angles. Noise squalls slip Throbbing Gristle corrosion against the cosmic bounce of German Progressives like Cluster or NEU. There’s an overt an appreciation for dance that even finds the band blossoming towards baggy. While it used to be just sonics that they’d pasted into their ‘90s scrapbook, the new album makes it clear that the band’s borrowed the decade’s fearless sense of adventure as well.

Feeling like the kind of record that was getting scooped when majors had a vague sense that indie labels had figured out a formula for success, the record captures much of the chaos and crunch that let the Surfers, Camper Van Beethoven, and early Lips lacquer true pop moments onto art rock in ways that would prove foundational. In an era when emphasis on instant connection obscures the bigger picture, Dummy have crafted an album that’s filled with enough nuance that it begs dozens of plays just to parse it all out. The best part is, it gets more interesting with each spin on the speakers. The band shakes off the past while sounding like the future.

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