Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken Dum Dum Girls for granted. They’re a group that’s been cranking out lovely, well crafted albums since 2008, amassing a well-earned and devoted following around the world, and yet I’ve always experienced Dum Dum Girls more or less in the background of things, respecting their cred but never pausing to take it in — that is, until seeing them perform live Tuesday at the Sinclair. Attending the show, I felt a bit like a fish out of water among the crowd, many of whom, as Dee Dee Penny noticed about halfway through the set, knew every lyric (“Sometimes I get nervous and forget the lyrics to my own songs, but then I just look out and someone is lip-syncing it,” she confessed with a little giggle). By show’s end, I understood the appeal.
Easy listening duo Ex Cops opened the evening on gossamer wings, with dreamy Danish lead singer Amalie Bruun’s clear, steady voice cutting knife-like through the room. It’s a cool vibe they’ve got going, somewhere between tropical lo-fi and cowboy movie soundtracks. The strongest track in their set, “Tragically Alright,” was co-written with the band’s friend Ariel Pink — a badass groove that opens like a cactus flower on a chilly desert night.
Dum Dum Girls descended on the stage onlike a team of assassins — smooth, polished, and deadly, a cadre of seasoned professionals in black. Dee Dee Penny took the mic in hand with quiet confidence, a massive neon D-U-M gracing the screen behind her, and began their set with the entirety of the band’s new album, Too True, released in January of 2014. They took a set break after finishing with “Trouble Is My Name” that seemed, for the moment, to be the end of the show before they came back with a healthy nine-song helping of old favorites, including “He Gets Me High” and “Bedroom Eyes,” among others, with a final encore (for real this time) of “Jail La La.” Dum Dum Girls’ sway-y, dreamy tunes are restrained and powerful at the same time, and each moment of sleek vocal harmonization fell on the crowd like a sigh.
Watching Dum Dum Girls perform was a visual pleasure, too. A highly stylish band, each member was a symphony in black, a few of them even pulling off delicately kinky leather harnesses and collars over their duds. More than putting together good outfits, though, this is a group that exudes confidence in a very satisfying way. Bassist (and my favorite strain amongst the vocal harmonies — her voice is high and salty-sweet) Malia James occupies the stage in complete comfort and ease, grooving to her own rhythm, while the band’s only male member Andrew Montoya finely shreds guitar without betraying a single emotion. This kind of finely tuned presentation can only come from a band in harmony with one another.
Dum Dum Girls’ flavor of lush indie pop is popular for a reason — it’s pretty, well-composed music with a lot of longevity and a neutrality that makes it easy to listen to. Perhaps it’s that neutrality in tone that’s fuzzed my vision of Dum Dum Girls up until this point, being often drawn to more rambunctious types of music. But there’s a subtlety in this music, a well-honed personal style, that’s well worth the attention.
