Cynical, Bittersweet Powder Drug Noir at Pete’s Tonight

by delarue

Interesting twinbill tonight, Dec 16 starting at 9 PM at Pete’s Candy Store. Bad Galaxy, who mine a sardonic folk noir vein, open for the similarly cynical, wryly surreal Dream Eaters, who play their distantly Lynchian quasi new wave at 10.

Ironically – in the true sense of the word – the Dream Eaters’ best song is the one that’s not on their album We Are a Curse, streaming at Bandcamp. That number is the woozily spot-on Klonopin Girl. But it’s a good prototype for the album tracks. “Back in the wasteland, sinking in the quicksand,” frontwoman Elizabeth LeBaron intones in a phenobarbitol murmur as Dead on the Inside begins. But then her voice rises to the rafters as the song grows from Jake Zavracky’s steady, staccato guitar strum to anthemic Julee Cruise territory. “I get so fried, trying to get through,” LeBaron wails.

With acoustic guitar, drum machine and enveloping vintage lo-fi synth textures, the calmly stomping Neanderthals follows the same template. “Keep the vermin out,” LeBaron instructs,” They won’t make us crawl, they’re all neanderthals.”

Dots is much the same: steady acoustic fingerpicking sparkles against deep-space ambience and LeBaron’s girl-down-the-well vocals. As you’ve figured out by now, the songs titles are dead giveaways. Astral Asshole and Sugar Coma share druggy outer-space metaphors and melancholy DollHouse harmonies. Almost Afraid, with its dreamy death imagery and understated front-porch folk guitar, brings back fond memories of late zeros Williamsburg cinephiles the Quavers. But Plastic Princess, which would be straight-up new wave at twice the speed, isn’t a dis: it’s a cautionary tale about the perils of conformity.

“Let me be your albatross,” LeBaron intones over a slow, stately chamber pop backdrop in So Heavy. With its grisly images, is the album’s languid title track a condemnation of Brooklyn gentrifier anomie? That’s open to debate. A final, fingerpicked lament, Brazil Song, is about as Brazilian as the Brazilian Girls. Some people might catch a few bars of this and dismiss it as wannabe Lana Del Rey faux-noir. But if sad, drifty music infused with gallows humor is your thing, stick with it.