Dum Dum Girls - End of Daze EP

Last time we saw the Dum Dum Girls they were making good-if-slightly-bloodless 60s pop, conforming to the trend for that kind of thing. And as much as the band deserve credit for not following the other trend of using pointless amounts of muddying reverb (on their second LP, at least), their songs remained deeply formulaic, not helped by lead singer Dee Dee Penny's proficient but inscrutable vocals.

End of Daze is more of a mainstream pop effort; 'Mine Tonight' sounds a bit like The Raveonettes, but it's also as desperate to be anthemic as any Killers song you care to name. 'I Got Nothing' has a garage-rock drumbeat, but everything else (yes even the vocals, especially the vocals) sounds like it was lifted from a Kelly Clarkson album track.

'Trees and Flowers', a cover of the Strawberry Switchblade song, is made to sound like a particularly lazy Best Coast ballad. There was a workmanlike cover of 'There is a Light That Never Goes Out' on Dum Dum Girls last EP and I'm not one to insist covers differ drastically from their original incarnations, but I would like to hear a little passion at least. The last two tracks passed me by a bit, I must admit - they sounded like, um, pop songs? With not very good lyrics? I'm struggling here: they are pretty bland and pretty slow. And pretty pretty, I suppose. But you could listen to them a hundred times and not be able to hum a single line.