Album Review

Dub Thompson - 9 Songs

Item: Dub Thompson - 9 Songs
Rating: 4

A record replete with droning psychedelia, an infectious energy and a sinister, carnivalesque feel.

Reviewer: Nathan Roberts

Released: 9th June 2014

Label: Dead Oceans

Dub Thompson are Max Pulos and Evan Laffer, an unhinged duo hailing originally from the supposedly affluent Agoura Hills, a city just north of LA that has also given the world success stories like Linkin Park and Hoobastank. But their music is anything but what one might expect from such a lineage. It’s probably possible to count on a single hand the number of bands who seem frighteningly compelling today, and the opening salvo of ‘Hayward’ goes a long way in convincing that Dub Thompson just might be one of them.

‘9 Songs’, produced by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, frequently shifts gear, switching convincingly from ‘No Time’, a psych-peddler’s wet dream centred on an intimidatingly tossed off refrain gnawing on the song’s hypnotic structure, to the titular ‘9 Songs’, which offers the off-kilter surge of a bastardised Ennio Morricone score.

There’s lead single ‘Dograces’ too, which has a perfectly rancid rip of a riff from Beck’s ‘Odelay’, turning that record’s slacker-centric crunk rock in to something more thunderous, a coherent streak that runs through the album. This is a record replete with droning psychedelia, an infectious energy and a sinister, carnivalesque feel.

It’s almost nonsensical, then, that ‘9 Songs’ actually contains eight. Maybe it’s an off-hand reference to Michael Winterbottom’s film of the same name - that movie’s highly driven link of music to hyper-charged sexuality only reiterates this record’s ideas of being a reckless punk. Or it might just be one of the song’s own titles, and we’re taking the matter far too seriously. Everything about this raucous debut suggests we shouldn’t.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, Dead Oceans, Dub Thompson