Photo of Father Rupert from the Balliol College Archive, c. 1910
And so I emerge, blinking sleepily, in a new year of music with arms full of new stuff to listen to, thanks to Christmas well-wishers. But, truth be told, I'm still sifting through my Black Friday purchases from a month ago, and it's getting harder and harder to process all the input. Hopefully, before the 2011 new releases start to trickle out, I'll be able to cover some of these new acquisitions with "It's New to Me" entries.
And what could be more current than writing about Dressy Bessy? Caught with all the negative stigmas within their Elephant 6 enclave (not from Athens, recording for Kindercore, more Apples in Stereo than Neutral Milk Hotel), Dressy Bessy were a 60s-influenced twee-pop band that was definitely in the second tier of its little music clique. But I always liked them - Tammy Ealom's chirpy voice and sugary pop hooks are sometimes just what the doctor ordered, and I finally picked up a key piece of the Dressy Bessy puzzle when I found a cheap second-hand copy of the Little Music singles collection.
Like a lot of the bands of its ilk, Dressy Bessy put first-rate songs on EPs and singles, and this 18-track compilation covers the non-LP tracks from the band's peak period. Little Music starts with some surprisingly strong stray tracks from comps and Kindercore releases, but the real story is in the band's two EPs. The record's low point is easily the "You Stand Here" EP, primarily because it contains three of the band's earliest recordings from 1997. These songs are pretty rough, compositionally and recording-wise, and it would have been a good idea to tuck them away at the back of the tracklist. Or maybe not - I like that Little Music ends quite strongly with the "California" EP. The five songs from this second EP are among Dressy Bessy's best, from the appropriately sunny title track to the bare-bones oom-pah sounds of the closer "In the Morning". My favorite might be "Some Better Days" - the corny "trumpet" synth at the beginning is a fanfare for a crunchy guitar riff and one of Ealom's most elastic, bouncy melodies.
"Some Better Days" by Dressy Bessy
2 comments:
Dressy Bessy is a real problem band for me (the fact that I hate the name doesn't help). I love the songwriting and the arrangements, but Tammy Ealom's pitch is often so flat that it can make it really hard for me to enjoy them ("Some Better Days" is one of the lesser offenders in this regard). I'm not usually that sensitive to vocal intonation but I swear sometimes she's close to a quarter-tone flat.
It's funny, I can totally hear what you're talking about, but it doesn't bother me when I listen to Dressy Bessy.
Like most casual music fans, I think I'm not consistent at all when it comes to pitch issues - sometimes I couldn't care less, but sometimes it bugs the heck out of me. I think it bothers me more with male singers - there's lots of '80s Brit-indie I can barely listen to because of pitch issues (I'm looking at you, Orange Juice!)
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