Sunday, January 27, 2008

Gender Discrimination Week: Devil Doll

"I’m not your fuckin’ cadillac"

Devil Doll, or Colleen Duffy, just released her second album, and it reminded me that I never posted the first one, of which I am a big fan. Though it could have benefited from tighter editing, or at least somebody to tell her to not include every song she ever wrote, and maybe save it for another album to be released in interim 4 years between the first and the second, it's, as JD Weis, who was kind enough to censor him/herself, says on amazon.com, "smoky, sexy, jazzy, punkish, brassy, b#llsy, b$tchy." It's appeal comes in that it avoids going all the way to cunt-y (that's not a word, is it), by being vicious and exposed at the same time. There are songs are about uncompromising women who must make the decision to compromise (usually in love), though there's never a sense of whether they're doing the right thing. Then the other songs are about being generally kick ass, but it's still tempered by that depth.

Standout tracks include the opener, "St Christopher," "Walk With Me," "Liquor Store," "Bourbon In Your Eyes". . . Actually, pretty much everything on here. When I say it's too long, it's literally because it's too long, and that's a shame because by the end it's not so much that the quality hasn't decreased, rather, it's just hard to focus that long in general. The only false step on the album is "Don't Lose Your Faith in Love." Nice sentiment, but overly long and drawn out. The rest is energetic, great music (she has a great band behind her), and lotsa fun.

I haven't given The Return of Eve as careful a listen yet (sat through it a few times while doing other things.). It seems to have more of a twang to it, and even a fiddle! And just as flirty ("St Patrick"-- You can show me just what kind of saint that you can be) and tough ("The Curse.") as Queen of Pain. I don't know if the sophomore release suffers from the same length problem, but it has 4 less tracks, which is about the number the first album should have cut off and released as, I dunno, an EP.

3 comments:

McCrank said...

Very cool -- thanks for the tip on the solid, bourbon sounds of Devil Doll. I recently happened upon the HorrorPops via a link on Dave Navarro's site. I linked to them via my site, you probably already rock them, but they're much in the same vein as the doll.

;-)

McCrank
http://mccranksjuke.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

How about this Devil Doll?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Doll
http://www.devildoll.nl/

b said...

http://albums-metal-melodico.blogspot.com/

These guys have some of the *other* Devil Doll for those like Anonymous 3:37 who are interested. I have yet to give them a listen but thought I'd throw that up there if there's a demand.

It's interesting that a number of the reviews of (our) Devil Doll's CD on amazon.com are people who accidentally bought it thinking it was those other guys.

 

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