Dum Dum Girls

Too True (Sub Pop)

Red flag: an album accompanied by a navel-gazing narrative on how the artist, in response to some trauma or another, isolated herself to read and write and marinate in pain and emerged on the other side triumphantly bearing a document of that time period. Such is the case with Dum Dum Girl Dee Dee Penny, whose third LP is a New York-inflected art-pop diary of just such a period. Over the course of 10 bite-sized songs, Penny betrays headier artistic impulses in repeated nods to Patti Smith (“Rimbaud Eyes”) and Siouxsie Sioux (“Are You Okay”). “Evil Blooms” deliciously poppy, but “Lost Boys and Girls Club” rolls the most interesting, probably because it’s the most original sounding, all sludgy guitars and moody atmospherics. Too True offers the very definition of postmodern pastiche: a collection of ultimately empty gestures to previous forms. (1:10am, Red 7 Patio; Fri., Courtyard at Cedar Street, 11:45pm)

**

This article appears in March 14 • 2014.

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