by Dash Lewis (@gardenerjams)
L.A.’s Dummy are purveyors of absolutely blissful drone-pop. The quartet’s motorik rhythms and squealing guitars aim straight for the pleasure centers carved out by Stereolab and Broadcast. For some, those bands are a genre unto themselves; their name checks alone could be all that’s needed to sell a couple more copies of Mandatory Enjoyment. Dummy’s goal, however, isn’t simple imitation. Sure, the hallmarks are there—gently bouncing “ba-ba-ba”s, droning guitar chords, a love of repetition—but the band gently folds in plenty of outside influences. They create a sound that’s reverent to its progenitors but not beholden to their rules.
At first blush, Enjoyment’s most prominent touchstones are Stereolab’s earliest albums, specifically Peng! and Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements. Those records tend to drone in place, perpetually burrowing into their distorted grooves until they hit bedrock. Dummy’s songs, however, carve a more jagged path. Synth stabs stutter and echo through the verses of “Fissured Ceramics.” They break into a pulsing drone during the chorus, allowing for the guitars to briefly set themselves aflame with feedback. A Casio-like arpeggio line beckons the motorik drums and guitar of “HVAC”’s initial section before everything downshifts into a glistening kosmiche hum.
Upon repeated listens, the tiny flourishes of Dummy’s collective interests further set their sound apart from their more obvious influences. Shades of The West Coast Art Pop Experimental Band’s vocal harmonies appear on “Protostar” and “Tapestry Distortion.” “X-Static Blanket” combines labelmates Smoke Bellow’s playful bassline-and-drums post punk with the watery shoegaze of Snapper’s “Dark Sensation.” The integration of these disparate influences never feels forced or overt; they seem to come from an encyclopedic knowledge and bottomless passion rather than a checklist of cool.
Closer “Atonal Poem” is perhaps Dummy’s most adventurous composition. Beginning with an FM synth sequence akin to Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s “Sunset Village,” the band meticulously layers wordless vocals, hand percussion, and a chiming guitar figure into a gently propulsive New Age groove. Everything calmly drifts apart before restructuring into a transcendent minute of immense psych-pop. It’s a fitting final song that showcases everything that made the previous eleven tunes so compelling.
It’s not always easy for a band with such a plethora of ideas to integrate them so smoothly. Without the strength of their songwriting, Mandatory Enjoyment could come off as a hollow list of reference points that dissipate the moment the record ends. That is decidedly not the case here, as each touchpoint is confidently held in veneration. The members of Dummy clearly consider their songwriting as an extension of their insatiable musical curiosity, channeling it into an excellent debut album.