Opening track "Fire and Ice" sets the stage, with Gwen’s vocals recalling the loose emotional antics of Frank Black channeled through a pre-teen girl with Lucy’s vocals playing Kim Deal to Gwen’s lead. The exuberance of the performance shines thorough a simple opening number. Gwen, at the age of 13, and Lucy, at 11 years, have already got the fact that playing music is fun, and it shows here.
The second track, "It Doesn’t Matter," takes us closer to mid ‘90’s Belly or Veruca Salt, with Gwen’s drums providing a solid backbeat to song, while Gwen’s guitar gets a makeover in tone from the first track, adding a lot of low end to provide some menace to the chorus.
"Did You See?" has the sisters trading off the lead vocals to good stereo effect ala Cibo Matto, some great spacious echo making the two youngsters sounding huge on the track. Riding the backbeat, with more ear candy, Dog Party sounds far more accomplished then they have a right to sound.
"School Again" starts with some delicate acoustic strumming over a tribal backbeat, showing that someone has been playing some interesting records for Lucy. The song has one of those catch “la-la-la-la” refrains that make you think writing a hit single should be the easiest thing in the world, except that you know it isn’t. With a few simple lyrics, Gwen and Lucy touch base with the kids in all of us come September: "Back to School again/starting a band with my friends/we can’t wait til summer/ back to school what a bummer." Pure primal ‘60’s candy pop, but with some smarts.
"The world is not a game" wouldn’t sound at all out of place as a Breeder’s outtake, Gina’s Go-Go’s drums, the repeating vocals carrying part of the rhythm allowing the lead to wander in and out of the beat as Gwen gets angry and stays angry. A smart break 1:21 into the song winds the band down to some great vocals: look at the sky/ look through the clouds/look through my door/you’ll see the world is not a game. The guitar chugs smartly through the song, but the real star on this song is the lead vocals which are the best on the record.
The closing track, which is tipping us off with the recorded crickets at the beginning, is a bigger goof than anything else on the CD. After 6 songs of tightly controlled pop and rock, "EPA" is the equivalent of the Smithereens’ “White Castle Blues”: animal noises and chanted backgrounds, "EPA" is a horror story told through Dr. Suess and my guess is that it was tougher to not crack up while recording it than to learn the song.
The joy here, in this little collection of songs, is to hear some of the great pop smarts already at work with the Giles girls. Here’s hoping for many more years of music from these two. Dog Party's debut is just out on Half of Nothing Records.
--partyin' with the dogs - the fearless rock iguana
www.myspace.com/dogpartylive
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