by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
Dummy has always been a psychedelic rock band worth watching. Literally. The synths they bring out perk up the gearheads; the blue screens n' lights inadvertently reward those who'll pay $10 for the 7% hop-bombs at the bar; the gentle workhorse nature that makes these walloping blasts of sound into an ecstatic happening. Oh and those loops n' transitions, they'll bring out the record collector in you as you try to figure whether it's ambient or komische. Nerd shit no doubt, but man if it does not make for something so present and attention grabbing. Chris Adolf of American Culture said it best in Dummy’s Tour Diary: “The record is very soft, but live they go really hard.”
Between the end of 2022 to 2023, I had the fortune of seeing the one time five piece, now four piece (Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, and Joe Trainor), perform repeatedly across San Diego; opening for Snail Mail, co-headlining with FACS, and even Luna during a rare engagement at the Belly Up. Three different types of rock clubs, three different kinds of audiences (ranging from Zoomers to Boomers); each time upstaging with unequivocal ease. Perhaps the most telling moment to all of this was during that second co-headliner with FACS. It was a show where I was able (with text message paragraphs of coaxing) to get my DFA-dance head to come out and take a chance. He was not just into Dummy's music after sampling, but the ethos; he'd done enough small projects outside his 9-5 looking to start a band and he knew "making music should not be fun". He was sporting a shirt by the end of the set.
The militancy in the mantra makes sense when you recall the fact that Dummy themselves are all pretty much over the age of 35, they've been vets of a Baltimore scene from an era gone by, and they love music too much not to at least keep the conversation they started in their record collection going. That conversation is something that's rather tangible in the material world. It exists in the liner notes of their releases with recommendations as much as at those shows where they're opening (or at the Permanent Records Roadhouse where Joe Trainor might just curate). That conversation has been a pleasure to see unfold, as Dummy repeatedly evolves and mutates from audience to audience. All while sprouting up one new convert at a time, building up something that's quite populist, able to guide them from noise rock to ambient bliss out and head nodding dance.
In talking to the quartet earlier in July, Trainor made it clear that Dummy needs to be able to channel its love of the avant-garde and indie rock into a pop bliss that anyone and everyone could draw something from. Maybe that's why their latest, Free Energy, is running neck and neck with the Still House Plants from last spring for the my preferred "indie rock" record of the year. Dummy seem astutely aware of how to channel a broad spectrum of influence into a featherweight sound of their own. One that has a lot of indie sounds it wants to bring to a crowd, and does so without giving up on the idea that the avant can be approachable and bridgeable.
Recording wise, it's always something that has almost been within reach. Had you asked me before about Dummy's best releases, it would have been those first EPs and last year's walloping Sub Pop 7". The band does excel at brevity, if only because they felt like the tantalizing curios of the record shop; the CD single or 7" worth the import price because it really was a handshake that could connect one world to another as a seamless bridge. It let you in on a conversation you could take something to ponder and build from. For Dummy, that was a sort of anything goes punk/freeform reflected by classic SST married to new age inversions on new age psychedelic tape outposts like Moon Glyph and Drongo. Mandatory Enjoyment was itself filled with dazzling sounds that hinted at all of that. Although it often scurried into trance or ambience right when the noise happened to hit its own bliss; cuts paced against themselves led to great nuggets over an inspired sequencing.
Free Energy is not a major deviation from Mandatory Enjoyment in that department, it just happens to now have its pacing down in ways that feel more improvisational and fluid. Arguably this is the result of refuting the death-by-Stereolab-comparisons of their last LP by now subsuming the 90s Too Pure roster across their multifaceted sound. If Dummy wanted to make a modern Pop (Do We Not Like That?), Free Energy happens to succeed in evoking that compilation. “Blue Dada” itself could be best described as "First half Plainsong, second half Super 45" and I mean that in the best of ways. Even as particular Groop noise n' Shields' guitar wales remain, there's a fearless plunge towards the drum machines and looping akin to Quique era Seefeel and mid-90s Laika--percussion sounds themselves rising up in their overall mix. The result is that cuts from “Intro-Ub,” “Soonish,” and “Psychic Battery” all benefit from mixes that make you either want to crawl into the speaker to hear the drum just a little more or enact a groove across on the lower half of your body a la Madchester. Even Maatman (who also deserves credit for one of the year's best cover designs and video campaigns that recall DVD compilations of the homespun Books and Beach House videos) makes a subtle yet seismic vocal shift, forgoing the limited range of Mandatory Enjoyment's vocals and pushes towards a more inquisitive, dare we say, Pram-ian delivery that fits the observations.
Trainor had demos that were modified or scratched, as one book (bands and sounds documented within Bruce Adams' You're With Stupid could be argued as a broad subconscious influence on the LP) or article write up, led to a different affinity for sounds and techniques to songwriting beyond their first LP. This is to say that while the band did tour and hone in on these across live shows, they learned when to let go of something and let a collaborator in for a new direction. Few indie acts quite have made saxophonist Cole Pulice feel more like a supporting member than Dummy (they've performed onstage with the group live in the Bay Area) and their contributions to the album on “Opaline Bubbletear” and “Sudden Flutes” are highlight for helping give more expanse and direction to their transitory ambient zones; the former mending solo Pulice sound design from Scry, while “Sudden Flutes” truly drops into wood synths as a spellbinding reset for the album's final trio of cuts. Meanwhile, Jen Powers, half of Powers/Rolin duo and Astral Editions, lends hammered dulcimer on the closer “Godspin,” an expansive reorientation of those British folk excursions of Dummy's early EPs. Both Pulice and Powers give Dummy that extra spark to their omnibus sound, while demarcating new stars in the avant underground that are equally as approachable and freewheeling as the quartet themselves.
Both these advancements give Free Energy their featherweight harmonic balance and sharp witted approachability. This is a populist sound, one built off guitar but without succumbing to the weight of it as their other shoegaze peers might. Trainor's logged his Bandcamp posts on a shoegaze sound and Dummy's Free Energy feels like a continuation on trying to elevate and display the sound as a part to work in a greater sum of a song than the whole enchilada (it’s what has made Seefeel, also with great new music, such a lasting presence). Take away that noise and the cuts still have the pop and folk craft underneath, as much as ambient drifts that still connect to tangible physical underground happenings.
In a way, that personally puts it in a small pantheon with a couple others from this decade (Bill Nace's Both and Krauss' Eye Country), releases that more or less reveled in the simplicity of the guitar for melodic yet avant-leaning potential, albeit from their own walled gardens and as a fringe concern. Free Energy is practically looking to unite anyone and everyone who has ever claimed to enjoy anything descended from a Velvet Underground drone to 90s post-rock labels or keeps up with the Bandcamp tape report and maintains an unfortunate open tab on r/shoegaze. If it can get any of them in the same room, let alone grooving, it'll be an energy flash to watch.