Late, high entry into my Top Hundred Albums of the Year. This will be posted on here again in that rundown in a few days. It's probably cheating as I only chanced on this record yesterday, but hey, I make the rules round here.
LAs Dummy do familiar things in a fresh way. Taking a quick glance at where they're coming from, on their playlist of influences for their debut album Mandatory Enjoyment on their Spotify page, is a good indication of what they're trying to do as anything else;
There you get, Silver Apples, Sun Ra, Stereolab, Psychedelic Byrds, Yo La Tengo, My Bloody Valentine. Just about enough for me, and Mandatory Enjoyment more than lives up to this exciting billing.
There's no evidence of anxiety of influence here.Just the sheer thrill of mixing up things that you love and spooling them out in a wondrous act of creation. Mandatory Enjoyment motors forward with wonderful carefree momentum.
Along with Jane Weaver's Flock, Golden Apples' Shadowland, Spirit of the Beehive's ENTERTAINMENT DEATH and Vanishing Twin's Ookie Gekkou, it's the best record of its sort I've heard this year and shows exactly what you're capable of if you use great taste and love and understanding of the things you love and are drawing from as your starting point. It also has the best actual song titles of pretty much any record I've heard this year. These things are important, at least to me.
Mandatory Enjoyment got an unusually enthusiastic response from Pitchfork when it came out at the beginning of the month. It's fairly rare for that august, self-regarding site to get hot under the collar about anything these days. But for once they get it entirely right about Dummy. They're an exciting band and a band to get excited about.
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