by David Wilikofsky
Dummy have steadily built buzz over the past year, thanks in part to two stellar EPs released by Pop Wig and Born Yesterday Records. The Los Angeles based band’s sound is at once familiar and hard to pin down, swirling together elements of ambient music, dream pop, psych rock and more. Now signed to the great Trouble In Mind Records, they’re ready to unleash their debut full length on the world. Mandatory Enjoyment fulfills the promise of their early releases, a restless album that takes familiar sounds and reinvents them as rock collage.
Mandatory Enjoyment is an album that wears its numerous influences on its sleeves: there are touches of the space age pop of Stereolab, the propulsive motorik beats of Krautrock, the atmospherics of Japanese new age music, both twee and noise pop (just to name a few). Though the composite parts are familiar, Dummy’s music sounds fresh because of the way they mix these elements and styles together. Some tracks don’t stray far from their roots, as when they combine etherial, floating vocals with squalls of guitar feedback for pure noise pop bliss (see “Daffodils”, which could easily be a lost 90s Slumberland classic). But just as many subvert the listener’s expectations. “HVAC” starts as a straightforward noise pop song, but falls apart and reconstructs itself multiple times through atmospheric and noisy passages. “Final Weapon” contrasts calm vocals with a frenetic, churning rhythm. Closer “Atonal Poem” goes from Inoyama-land to shoegaze within the span of a few minutes. This sense of musical playfulness animates the album, always zigging when you expect a zag.
The sense of restlessness is also reflected in the band’s writing. Song topics are wide ranging, tackling everything from the apocalyptic (climate change, nuclear bombs) to the depressing ( the commodification of art) to the banal (interior design). It’s tempting to write the album off as a mishmash of ideas, but more than anything, Mandatory Enjoyment reflects the modern condition back at us. Our lives are defined by the inequities of late stage capitalism, impeding global crises, and feeds of endless content; Dummy manage to capture that combination of information overload and existential dread while still keeping things catchy.
Mandatory Enjoyment is the work of a band bursting at the seams with ideas, more than could possibly be fleshed out on a single album. I have no idea what they’ll sound like one or two albums down the line, but I’m willing to bet it’ll also be something special.