End of Daze

Time heals all wounds, or so the phrase goes. For the dreamers however, time gives them — or maybe demands — the perspective of every angle, every possibility, every opportunity to wring out whatever is born from experience. Simple moments alone can magnify these perspectives, culminating in a deeper empathy, and for a select few, a muse for new artistic expression. Such seems the fate of Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls.

Much has been written of Dee Dee’s personal trials, but no words speak better of her handling of experience than her musical output. End of Daze offers a bracing, daring sonic example of an artist evolving in her understanding of the world.

End of Daze flows from a pair of bombastic opening tracks, through the simmering, plaintive cover of Strawberry Switchblade’s “Trees and Flowers”, to the regretful ballad “Lord Knows”, in which Dee Dee’s voice remains rich yet crystalline, a gorgeous, toned instrument revealing an awareness of fear and misstep. Closing the EP is “Season in Hell”, a raucous and practically joyful closing of the book on past pains, and, perhaps more importantly, a looking forward (“Doesn’t the dawn look divine?”) to the future. It is the last stages of grief and its repercussions, a hopeful awakening somewhere on the other side, caught on tape.

The EP was recorded in 2011 and 2012 with Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes and Dee Dee’s longtime producer Richard Gottehrer, whose track record includes the Brill Building, CBGB, and Sire Records.

Vinyl includes an mp3 download.