ALBUM REVIEW: “End of Daze” by Dum Dum Girls

Dum Dum Girls
End of Daze
[Sub Pop Records]

There is no better medium than music to convey to yourself, or your audience, how you viewed the world at the moment you put pick to strings, or pen to paper. End of Daze is a finely crafted, shimmering jewel of an EP, finished beautifully in the hands of veteran producer Richard Gottehrer. Dee Dee’s songwriting skills have never been better, and she evokes shades of atmospheric musical greats like The Cure, Lush and Mazzy Star.

From the opening thrum of bass and drums of “Mine Tonight,” you know that you are about to experience love, loss, sadness and the maturity that comes with it. The 60s girl-group influenced “I Got Nothing” melds into Strawberry Switchblade’s “Trees and Flowers,” the latter transformed into a heartbreaking, lump-in-the-throat inducing song. The single “Lord Knows” is a beautiful ballad to a wounded lover and her pain is tangible, though masked by the gorgeous background vocals. We emerge at the end in “Season in Hell,” and Dee Dee asks us “Doesn’t the dawn look divine?”, for it’s the “end of daze” and the beginning of a new outlook on life.