The Submissives

There’s something raw about the new album from The Submissives. Despite being the band’s first foray into the studio as a complete ensemble, the sheen and shine of the studio environment do little to diminish the bands slightly frayed ends. That’s by no means a slight, as one of the band’s most endearing qualities is their wobbly, woozy aura of unpolished perfection. Echoing similarly sizzled post-punk heroes like Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, Kleenex, and Oh-Ok, the band captures the kind of new wave wrinkles that develop in the divide between confidence and competence. The band, headed by Deb Edison, aim for prime period girl group soup, but slip through the funhouse mirror on the way. They boil their pop in something familiar while feeling like a third-hand description of a dream, landing like Marine Girls covering for The Ronettes with R. Stevie Moore in Spector’s chair.

The album plays with themes of the male gaze, souring the sonics behind the band’s coos and come-ons, a Venus Fly Trap dressed up in three-part harmonies. Their pocket symphony has been a bit misused and mangled, but the dents and dings are all a part of its charms. The voices melt together with a sweet caress before the horns and hues are pressed under cellophane and set out in the sun. The push and pull of the curdled atmospheres begins to warp the listener’s perceptions until the angles all feel quite natural. In some ways the album feels kitsch, like they’re just waiting for the word to start up as John Waters’ new house band, but it never feels like the band isn’t 100% committed to their aesthetic. If they played it for farce it’d fall flat, but instead the band forces us to slip through their altered time warp with them and its a hell of a trip.

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