A Feast of Beast

Dum Dum Girls - I Don’t Care

The track is just an unrelated theme song she just wrote for Rookie Mag that I hadn’t heard yet, but below is an exciting email detailing the new Dum Dum Girls End of Daze EP out in December on Sub Pop.  Looks like we’ve got a lot of waiting to go till then…

Dee Dee said:

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys in the moment of preparation for living.  They took place in solitude.  But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made the match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again.  And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                — Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross
 

I have always kept busy, even before this band, as a way to defeat stagnation.  As much as I hate verbal static in conversation (although I unintentionally participate), I fear its equivalent in life.  Sometimes my output may reflect a significant change, whether sonic or thematic, but it perhaps seems out of nowhere, as only I know how I’ve spent the time leading up to its release.  It is a back and forth, much like the above quote.
 
So then, a short guide to the upcoming DDG release, which from its title End of Daze, you can safely assume some sort of transmutation:
 
Two of the songs, “Mine Tonight” and “I Got Nothing,” were written immediately following the Only In Dreams session.  They were recorded in New York City with Sune Rose Wagner in February 2011, as was the Strawberry Switchblade cover of “Trees and Flowers”.  Intended as b-sides, their nature was too different, of another beast entirely, and so I set them aside for a future, more atmospheric release.
 
The simultaneous aloneness and togetherness of band life found me immersing myself in anything that could prompt a visceral response.  Imagine Lush’s album Spooky as a poem; James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room a wash of reverbed guitar; the concrete of New York City an intoxicating jasmine perfume.
 
The companionship of the rest of the band as always served as soother and muse, and I gratefully took their presence with me back to NYC to finish the new EP over a year later.  I re-joined Wagner and Richard Gottehrer, first in a studio in Chelsea, and then another among the Bowery ghosts and “Lord Knows” and “Season In Hell” fleshed out what was to become End of Daze.  
 
The time between these sessions contributed to the thematic evolution of their content.  End of Daze begins amidst the residual confusion and immobility felt during the writing and recording of its predecessor and ends on a more lucid note:  a bloomed lightness.  It is a post-traumatic trip that many take, many who’ve dealt with greater personal Hells than I, but I hope that my version of survival, all washed up in reverb and guitars, leaves a good taste upon the tongue.
 
XX DD