Music Review: Dub Thompson, 9 Songs

Published on August 1st, 2014 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |

By Less Lee Moore

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At first blush, you might think Dub Thompson is punking you. The tracks on their debut, 9 Songs (which has eight songs, by the way), sound a lot like demos. These aren’t songs with actual verses and choruses. These are songs made up of tonally conflicting sections that rub up against each other, variations on a theme of impetuous, mischievous energy. The guitars have a jittery bravado and the drums and bass are turned up so that you feel them in your guts. Dub Thompson seem like they’re taking the piss but the music is seriously fantastic.

Opening with a thudding, sludgy lurch of sound, “Hayward” throws in acoustic flourishes and then becomes something totally other, with shouted, echoey vocals and blasts of distortion. The main guitar melody serves as a wordless chorus of anxiety that returns, shrieking, towards the end before fizzling into nothingness.

On the other hand, the scratchy samples and reggae flavor of “No Time” only features one actual lyric, that’s repeated over and over. And it’s the kind of thing that digs its claws into your brain for days on end.

The acoustic guitar/heavy bass intro of “Epicondyles” (go look it up!) feels more like an emotional denouement. That’s the part that becomes a chorus of sorts, alternated with a faster vocal section with heavy drums. Do I know what Dub Thompson are singing about? Hell no. They like to rhyme and make puns, something that becomes obvious on the truly odd “Dograces.” It’s all good, even the stinger at the end. Can a song have a stinger? Well, this one does.

“Mono” gets a tremendous groove going immediately with the help of spastic synths and a ridiculously punky guitar chorus, while “Ash Wednesday” introduces slide guitar and a somewhat more upbeat feeling. In between, there’s the instrumental “9 Songs” (see what they did there?). The rapid-fire guitar/drum exchanges in “Pterodactyls” feel influenced by early ’80s post punk and the weirder end of the hardcore spectrum even though the song doesn’t totally feel like either one.

9 Songs is 30 minutes of enjoyable weirdness that will grow on you like a fungus. Let’s hope these dudes stick around for a while.

9 Songs was released by Dead Oceans on June 10.



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