It makes sense that Dum Dum Girls thrive in short form. Though they've turned into a versatile band comfortable in an array of styles, their roots are in garage rock, a sound that has a long history of mining the potential of brevity: It's a genre built on a foundation of singles, whose holy text is aptly titled "Nuggets", and whose philosophy is summarized by a song that went "I hope I die before I get old." Though Dum Dum Girls' latest EP, End of Daze, has a handful of gothic influences, its all-killer-no-filler concision feels like a tribute to the spirit that they've have been riffing on since their debut, I Will Be. Unhurried but not a beat too long, End of Daze is a confident and comprehensive showcase for everything Dum Dum Girls do well, from luxuriant, moody ballads to driving, melodic guitar pop-- and after 18 minutes, it punches the time clock like somebody who just declared checkmate: Your move, every other band trying to sound like this.
This isn't the first time an EP has marked a turning point in the Dum Dum Girls' run. Last year's terrific, four-song He Gets Me High EP introduced a newfound Chrissie Hynde-like depth to Dee Dee's voice and new-car glimmer to the Girls' formerly lo-fi sound. It was a collection of cheery, upbeat songs about infatuation, except for the closing track -- a cover of the Smiths classic "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". Bold is the band that thinks it can bring something new to the song that's launched a million mascara tears, but Dum Dum Girls pulled it off in grand style. Sandy's kick drum towered 10-stories high and Dee Dee sold the track's jet-black drama, uttering her chilling delivery of "I want to see people and I want to see life" like a member of the walking dead. Now, on End of Daze, they're now penning some dark gems of their own.
"I've dreamed a death/ It's mine tonight," Dee Dee drawls on the opener "Mine Tonight", which smolders slowly and purposefully for a minute and a half before bursting into a panoramic blaze. Like Only in Dreams, Daze is an exploration of the feelings triggered by the recent death of Dee Dee's mother. But while many of the songs on Dreams painted grief with a palette of simple descriptors and easy rhymes ("There's nothing to say/ At the end of the day/ I'm wasting away"), Daze expresses these emotions with more depth. Tears fall "from desert eyes," home is "a sweet prison," and both Satan and Icarus make cameo appearances. The lush, cavernous sonics produced by loyal Dum Dum Girls collaborators Richard Gottehrer and Sune Rose Wagner echo this step forward, too. Sonically and lyrically, Daze does Dreams one better by blowing personal sorrow up to a mythic scale.
From "Mine Tonight" to the wonderfully brooding cover of Scottish new wave duo's Strawberry Switchblade's "Trees and Flowers" ("I hate the trees and I hate the flowers, and I hate the buildings, the way they tower over me"), there's not a weak song in the bunch. But the last two in particular are perhaps the best Dee Dee's ever written. Dripping with conviction, longing and remorse (and set off by an instantly transfixing opening line: "I want to live a pure life"), "Lord Knows" has a melody so perfectly gratifying that you'd swear you've heard it before. And in some ways, you have; it quotes the chord progression of "Crimson and Clover", right down to the chiming riff that punctuates the end of each line in the verse. But "Lord Knows" inhabits its influences so fully and with such conviction that this familiarity only makes it that much more magnetic. It taps into the strange sorcery of the greatest rock'n'roll songs, possessed with the power to set the world in slow motion for four commanding minutes.
"Season in Hell", on the other hand, kicks earth back into its orbit. A distorted riff quivers, and then Sandy's echoey, galloping beat drives the song forward. It is a song about the moment when your grief becomes portable, the necessity of continuing to mourn but also carrying on. It's a simple, emotionally sophisticated line from a band not generally lauded for their lyrics, but, coming at the end of a smartly sequenced narrative about darkness and redemption, its conclusion is that much more affecting: "Doesn't dawn look divine?"
Garage rock is also a genre of quick burnouts, its best compilations scattered with one- or no-hit wonders whose most explosive fireworks burned bright for three minutes before vanishing altogether. So perhaps the most profound way that the Dum Dum Girls have transcended their influences is the simple fact that they've stuck around, pushed past their limits, and gotten that much better. End of Daze is their best release. Much more than a stop-gap between LPs, it's succinct but irrefutable proof that this band's dynamite has a long fuse.
