The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Dum Dum Girls
10:00

Frankie Rose and the Outs
9:00
Happy Birthday
8:00
Coasting
7:00

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Sun 2/21
Notes:
21+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$10
Tickets
Dum Dum Girls
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Led by Dee Dee, Dum Dum Girls churn out pop music that adheres to her self-proclaimed M.O.: “blissed-out buzz saw.” Dee Dee formed DDG in late 2008 as a solo project—the name a nod to both The Vaselines’ album, Dum-Dum, and the Iggy Pop song “Dum Dum Boys”— and released a home-recorded CDR on her label Zoo Music followed by a 7" on HoZac and a 12" EP on Captured Tracks.

When Dee Dee needed a band to take her songs out of the bedroom, she looked to her friends: Jules, a San Diego-based furniture designer; Bambi, a non-profit worker in Austin; and Brooklynite Frankie Rose, a former Vivian Girl and Crystal Stilt, currently starting her own project as well. When the other three met for the first time a week before CMJ 2009, it was an instant girl gang.

Dee Dee wrote and recorded the songs that became I Will Be over the first eight months of 2009, and she asked a few others to contribute. Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner plays on “Yours Alone.” Crocodiles’ Brandon Welchez sings and plays guitar on the duet “Blank Girl.” And Los Angeles musician Andrew Miller contributes guitars to a number of tracks.

When it came time to choose someone to gently finesse I Will Be, the name Richard Gottehrer came up on Dee Dee’s wish list. Responsible for writing such seminal songs as “My Boyfriend’s Back,” and “I Want Candy,” he also produced his own short-lived band The Strangeloves, as well as The Voidoids, Blondie, The Go-Gos, and more recently, The Raveonettes. Marvels Dee Dee, “I gave him all the rough tracks and he produced them, as I had a lot of digital effects acting as sort of placeholders. I’m not exactly sure what he did, but it’s a world of difference. The songs sound warm, and they kind of sparkle.”

I Will Be runs just under thirty minutes with eleven songs; a short tribute to love, loss, fear, fun, and the classic pop form of the ‘60s girl groups and early punk rockers. Explaining the album’s dark-and-sunny feel, Dee Dee says, “There’s an overdramatic tone, much like a teenager’s world, but applied to the experience of getting older.” No track better exemplifies that sentiment than the somnolent “Rest of Our Lives,” a lullaby about marriage that captures, she says, “that feeling when you’re 16 and you think you’re going to be with your boyfriend forever. And that you’d just die if you weren’t. Except it’s about my husband.”

On the other end of the spectrum, “Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout” (the curious spelling being slang for marijuana) spends roughly two-and-a-half minutes musing on the virtues of psychedelics. And “Lines Her Eyes” touches on petty girl-on-girl competition, while “Jail La La” updates the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law” with a reverb-laden sing-along.

What’s with the bipolar songs? “I tend to be an introvert. So there’s a lot of time for weird thoughts to develop in my head before I put them down on paper,” says Dee Dee. “And it’s really bizarre living in Southern California. It’s that total stereotype of being super-laidback, this ‘everything’s perfect’ vibe. But you’re miserable in the sun because you’re stuck. Like, it’s so perfect that it’s overwhelming and depressing. That’s sorta inspiring.”
Frankie Rose and the Outs
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Happy Birthday
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Happy Birthday. Take your mother’s hand as she leads you to the table of your friends. You are about to eat musical cake and ice cream and see colors that you’ll dream about in future nights’ sleeps. They are pink and lime green and they are glowing electric and you will soon be happily floating in a pleasure-filled pit of rock and roll.

How did every morsel on Happy Birthday’s debut LP become as memorable as a first-slow-dance song? How did a first listen to the album feel like a 60th time through one of our old favorites? “Eyes Music,” with its upside-down rhythms and staircase harmonies marching across your face like martians. “Subliminal Message,” the ballad that you haven’t believed in since Cyndi Lauper weirdly made you weep in a Chevy Nova. “I Wanna Stay,” a song that you’re in the very center of and where you want to be for a long time. And the instantaneous “Girls FM,” a reminder about why we love the single and the rock trio. Buzzy guitar hammering you into happiness, a beat you can’t shake, and sweet back-up harmonies.

“Everybody’s on the same frequency,” the Happy Birthday kids sing without irony. The Happy Birthday kids care about making good music, and we can get behind them.

Over there is the girl you liked last year, there are several wrapped geo shapes on the table and they are presents for you. Some kid is laughing at you and it makes your nostrils pucker, on the other hand those cool weird kids are here, they are hanging out in the corner. It’s ruthie and kyley and chris, they will play even if you’re not there.

Kyle was King Tuff long before you knew him, having been born with a rocker’s grin in Brattleboro, Vermont. Don’t laugh at Vermont. Kyle’s love for rock came pure as the water melting off the mountains: from his mother’s tit he sucked Ozzy and Prince, and in his diapers he left traces of Sid Vicious. Ouch.

Kyle and his grimey cronies hatched schemes over steaming paper cups of coffee in the cold New England air. Plans for sounds that were immediate and alive, nostalgic in the most present of tenses. Ruthie shadowed with the drumsticks as Kyle tapped out the beats. Chris filled in the dream with puzzles from his “inverted-tuning” guitar, swung great chops with his severe bass.

chris will turn it upside-down, the world is upside down and this music too. kyle will scream in your face, his guitar will too, wake up. ruthie will lay it down, she grew her beat as her toenails formed. it’s bright yellow popcorn and it’s good for you and you like it. “Dance, dance,” those kids cry.

UTERUS, FETUS HEAD, ‘BILI CORD, POP.

Happy birthday.
Coasting
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