Sixties retro band Dressy Bessy appeals to the calmer, surreal instincts in all of us.
The unadorned rock on the band's latest release, Little Music complete with Tammy Ealom's sweet voice and John Hill's jangly guitar brings to mind simple pleasant moments. It's definitely road trip music and it's definitely summer music, even when Ealom sings, "It's cold outside/we'll go outside/we'll build a snowman," on the track "Gloria Day."
Ealom's voice is reminiscent of a less jaded Kim Deal - all the purity of tone is there sans irony. That's what really works for Dressy Bessy: this band is not world-weary. The members are not angry, they're not complaining about obscure generalizations so common in today's rock.
This band just kind of is in that semi-Buddhist fashion. This is not to say that Dressy Bessy is uninteresting and writing songs about chipmunks and flowers. Instead, they offer a specific sound fronting plain structure and bare lyrics.
Dressy Bessy makes some interesting decisions regarding what to keep in their retro sound and what to modify. Though the guitars pretty much stay in the 1960s vein - think Smash Mouth or Quasi - this shiny little group uses odd synthesizers and samples to create a music box appeal.
Candy-coated lyrics tend to dominate on Little Music, but vocal loops and the use of multiple vocal tracks is ultimately satisfying. Again, Zen-like simplicity and decent hooks are the cornerstone of this album. And is that a tambourine in the background of "Gloria Day?"
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Drummer Darren Albert performs the function of nailing the sound down with consistent beats underneath the sonic array of textures presented by the rest of the group. Dressy Bessy masterfully maintains clarity on this album, though an increasing amount of detail gathers slowly for the listener the longer they hear it.
It's surprising that all the songs sound so remarkably similar, especially considering that Killer Music collects it's music from the band's entire career since its inception in 1998. With a time range like that, you would think there had been some sort of evolution.
This sound that they do so well, though refreshing, eventually grows annoying. Every song begins at roughly the same tempo and Ealom has no range of emotion in her voice whatsoever.
This is the kind of aesthetic Deal pulls off masterfully with a variety of hooks and emotion inside her constant grain, Ealom's repetitive musical instincts make her uber-poppy melodies fall flat and grow monotonous.
Still, if you're looking for something a little light to offset the vague depression the rock scene has been conveying in past years, Little Music is probably the way to go.
