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The one-string guitar riff is usually the preserve of the beginner. It
usually winds up being a rough approximation of Smoke on The Water
regardless of whether the novice even knows how Deep Purple's classic goes -
it's just one of those primal things. It's like the human species has been
pre-programmed with Smoke on The Water. Quite how cavemen or indeed any
musician up until the fateful day of that Zappa concert had never played
those notes in that order is beyond comprehension.
Dag For Dag were obviously elsewhere when the Purple Program was being
installed. Opening track Ring Me, Elise suggests that when they picked up a
guitar for the first time, they decided that they only really needed to
learn one note and to learn any others would be far too elaborate a concept.
And so it is that Ring Me, Elise is perhaps one of the most hamfisted and
poorly played songs we've ever heard.
Still there is something unbearably
loveable about it. This is mainly down to the haunting vocals of brother and
sister duo Sarah and Jacob Snavely which sound bruised and androgynous and
beautiful. Style over passion does not have a home here. This is all about
belief. This is about forming a band when you're 11 and can't even play an
instrument yet. It's about the need to play music. It is therefore, weirdly
brilliant.
Pirate Sea consists of somewhere in the region of 3 notes, but is totally
driven by some haunting vocals that shiver your timbers until they crumble
into a pile of soggy but satisfied splinters. A vessel manned by Jim
Morrison and with a figurehead in the shape of Kate Bush would
sail the oceans to the sound of this shanty.
Words is a slow and creeping accordion piece that wouldn't be out of
place at a sea burial. You can practically see a dense fog pouring from your
speakers and filling the room as the song floats around you like the spirits
at the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark - the nice ones that is, not the ones
that cause your face to melt off. It does make you wonder how a band that
started a record with a one-fingered salute to musicianship can come up with
something so beautiful on the same record.
You Holler You Scream is another seething grind of a song. A vocal line
that reminds us of the much missed but never heard of Die Cheerleader
sits on top of some rudimentary but effective angular guitars. When the
layered vocals collide and compliment each other, the effect is stunning.
Rather like an expulsion of raw unbridled emotion in an empty church, its
both redemptive and terrifying in equal measure.
The remix that closes this
mini album can't capture any of the original's verve, and is a missed
opportunity and a waste of the listener's time. You're better off skipping
back to the beginning of the CD and marvelling in how something so simple
can be so effective. The first few notes you'll hear of Dag For Dag will
have you snorting with derision, but by the end you'll be enraptured.
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