Review Summary: Dark Pop: what happens when you play catch without arms
It's almost arrogant and presumptuous, the way dredg chose to begin their new album,
Chuckles & Mr Squeezy, 2 years after the brilliant but lukewarmly anticipated
The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion. Even if the lyrics contain huge grains of irony, "Another Tribe's" courageous declaration can easily leave their fanbase unsettled.
"Here we go, go again/ Following all the trends/ It's become an obsession/ Yet it's time to accept it, yeah" It's a funny thing, for a band like dredg, needing to state their adaptability with such a way that shows insecurity rather than determination. However, if you strip away any dredgian fanboyism that yearns for pomegranate stories, "Another Tribe" will seem a lot cooler, with all its dramatic synths and mellow sounds. Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is dark pop and it's as good as the name gets.
This time dredg parted with the famous dance pop/ hip-hop producer, Dan the Automator. An understandable choice, probably for the grand manifestation of the band's vision of their new sound,
Chuckles & Mr Squeezy's overall sound qualities are generally confusing. Tons of beats and flickering sounds have replaced the soaring slide guitars. No aggressive songs anymore, and no tricky guitar melodies. Pieces like "The Tent" bring forth that diffused nostalgia, a common element in their music, which now strives to unfold through the pompous production rather than the sliding guitar crescendos or the wall-of-sound techniques. Sweet guitar picks that rattle now and then, synths and suspicious horns are the main supporters of Gavin's warm voice, and in songs like " Sun Goes Down", with all its' background chorus strings, the result is rather interesting. This new approach reflects heavily on the whole album, still, the songwriting flexibility isn't so omnipresent. "Upon Returning" is an awful example of Dredg experimentation, a failed attempt of a need to sound mainstream and quirky at the same time. A similar playfulness is displayed in " Down Without a Fight", and the joyful beat that carries the song is somehow funny rather than danceable.
Dredg's two folded failure is more in terms of songwriting rather than in experimentation. They have worked with pop formats in albums like
Catch Without Arms and
Pariah, where they successfully used simple structures and smart songwriting. In
Chuckles & Mr Squeezy we face lazy pieces of music, overdubbed with tons of electronic waste. And as always the few shiny moments are buried under the pile. The closing "Before it Begun" is actually enjoyable with all its' lamenting and bass driven feeling, while "the Ornament" is chilling. "Where I'll end up" is optimistic and "Kalathat" is the most humane piece in the album. But none of them really stands out as a solid or catchy tune, as Dredg seem to intended them to be. Their choice to heavily rely on standard pop structures and fill them with synth hooks describes the album well, together with the disappointing, trite lyrics. From the metaphysical restlessness of "Somebody is Laughing" to the erotic invitation of " The Thought of Losing you", Gavin's lyrical edge seems to have wore off.
Chuckles & Mr Squeezy will be easily featured as dredg's weakest effort. The album can be summed up as a collection of slightly sympathetic to boring and flat songs, while it can be seen as the first misstep of the band's experimental nature, a thing that would inevitably happen. It's maybe futile, trying to explain the reason of this self-immolation. Either it is the further involvement of Dan in the writing process or the attempt for a mainstream acclaim, we can suppose that Dredg themselves have warned us some years ago, foreshadowing their own future. That's what happens...
