End of Daze

Sometimes less is more. This EP packs a concentrated punch, distilling the group\'s essence into five tracks, including an inspired, droning cover of Strawberry Switchblade\'s \"Trees and Flowers.\" The four originals written by Dee Dee are melodically strong but (more importantly) sonically focused, offering swirling riffs and mystical ambience. \"Mine Tonight\" is girl-group shoegaze at its most effective: lazy enough to float but strong enough to carry a gorgeous tune. \"I Got Nothing\" adds a rocker\'s verve. \"Lord Knows\" builds a cathedral of sound, with deep reverb, amassed vocals, and an organ holding down the bottom end. \"Season in Hell\" recalls The Cure\'s mid-\'80s output and, really, all great pop music, past and present.

Time heals all wounds, or so the phrase goes. For the dreamers however, time gives them — or maybe demands — the perspective of every angle, every possibility, every opportunity to wring out whatever is born from experience. Simple moments alone can magnify these perspectives, culminating in a deeper empathy, and for a select few, a muse for new artistic expression. Such seems the fate of Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls. Much has been written of Dee Dee’s personal trials, but no words speak better of her handling of experience than her musical output. End of Daze offers a bracing, daring sonic example of an artist evolving in her understanding of the world. End of Daze flows from a pair of bombastic opening tracks, through the simmering, plaintive cover of Strawberry Switchblade’s “Trees and Flowers”, to the regretful ballad “Lord Knows”, in which Dee Dee’s voice remains rich yet crystalline, a gorgeous, toned instrument revealing an awareness of fear and misstep. Closing the EP is “Season in Hell”, a raucous and practically joyful closing of the book on past pains, and, perhaps more importantly, a looking forward (“Doesn’t the dawn look divine?”) to the future. It is the last stages of grief and its repercussions, a hopeful awakening somewhere on the other side, caught on tape. The EP was recorded in 2011 and 2012 with Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes and Dee Dee’s longtime producer Richard Gottehrer, whose track record includes the Brill Building, CBGB, and Sire Records.

The Dum Dum Girls have transcended their influences but more importantly they've stuck around, pushed past their limits, and gotten better with each release. End of Daze is the best thing they've done, succinct but irrefutable proof that this band's dynamite has a long fuse.

Since releasing a full-length debut, I Will Be, in March of 2010, Dum Dum Girls—for all intents and purposes the solo project of Dee Dee (a.k.a. Kristin Gundred)—has maintained a steady pace of new material: the He Gets Me High EP in the spring of 2011, the Only In Dreams full-length later that year, and now End Of…

When Dum Dum Girls made the leap from songwriter Dee Dee’s bedroom to Sub Pop for 2010’s debut LP I Will Be, those…

At its best, this five-song EP summarizes the band’s strengths better than any of their work so far.