Dumb

Dumb

Pray 4 Tomorrow

Mint

DUMB had a classic start as a DIY outfit back in 2015, playing their first shows in the dining room of a tear-down in east Vancouver. The four band members, Franco Rossino, Shelby Vredik, Pipe Morelli, and Nick Short, were all part of a larger group of friends that jammed and partied together often. Seven years later, the band is set to release their third LP with Mint Records, Pray 4 Tomorrow—self-recorded at Choms, a studio co-owned by Nick Short and Franco Rossino. DUMB has toured extensively in North America and Europe, played with Wolf Parade and Dilly Dally, and are known for their catchy punk rhythms, squealing guitar feedback, and strongly spoken lyrics. Over the years DUMB’s songwriting has developed, and on Pray 4 Tomorrow their pop sensibilities manage to shine through the dissonant tones and syncopated rhythms borrowed from Yo La Tengo and Devo. Consider “Excuse me”, which finds a Beach Boys-esque melody placed gently atop the drop-tuned dissonance of Rossino and Short’s duelling guitars, or “Gibberish”—a heavy hitting post-punk bop that culminates in a melodic instrumental piano outro. DUMB is doing their best to balance their noisier tendencies with pretty melodies, in an approach similar to San Francisco’s Pardoner. Rossino’s vocals have matured from abstract rambling towards nuanced commentary, often poking fun at his own self-righteous attitude towards the stress of living in the information age. In “Out of Touch”, Rossino yells “I can see you talking but it sounds like simulations, I’m not sure...

Dumb

Club Nites

Mint

Dumb are good at plenty of things, but relaxing isn’t one of them. The Vancouver four-piece write feverish tunes at a frantic pace, delivering catchy post-punk songs in two-minute blasts of wiry riffs and indignant social critiques. Less than a year since they signed to Mint Records for 2018’s Seeing Green, they’re already back with a new full-length, Club Nites—this time with even more neuroticism and indignation! As the title indicates, Club Nites is a collection of narratives drawn from the nightlife ecosystem. Attempting to break from the typical romanticized version of “the club” as seen on TV, the album instead depicts a bleak social setting, where one zooms in on seemingly petty details in order to reveal the cracks that Hollywood forgot to fill. Cynical but never self-serious, these songs offer gritty insights about being unable to meet the lofty expectations of your peers (“Beef Hits”), showing disregard towards your closest friends (“My Condolences”) and feeling overstimulated in a meme-fueled cultural economy (“Content Jungle”). This album has the energy of a raw nerve: the songs are dry and in-your-face, with crisp production that leaves every squeal of feedback and hollered refrain exposed. Dumb wrote and self-produced it in their own studio over the course of a few months in early 2019, with mastering from Mikey Young (Total Control). Packing fourteen tracks into a little more than half an hour, the band is unfailingly economical, with no-nonsense song structures that last just long enough to get stuck in the head.

Dumb

Seeing Green

Mint

Dumb is the new smart. Don’t believe it? Look no further than this ridiculously prolific Vancouver quartet, who have somehow cracked the code on including quality with their quantity. Over the last two years, they have self-released three albums of quirky, frenetic post-punk. While others might go stale, however, this band breaks new ground with each new idea. Enter Seeing Green, the band’s first full-length for Mint Records. The album’s fourteen tracks were produced by Jordan Koop (Wolf Parade, You Say Party, The Courtneys) at the Noise Floor on Gabriola Island, BC. While it’s the band’s first time working on this relatively larger scale, Koop’s production has crystallized their ideas. The result is a batch of songs that sound both urgent and timeless, referencing classic post-punk projects like DEVO, Pylon and the Mekons, while placing them nicely within the pantheon of Canadian contemporaries like Ought, Fountain and Freak Heat Waves. Their jagged guitars and punchy rhythm section lay a perfect basis for their lyrics, all of which explore the inherent absurdity of modern life. At times paranoid and other times exuberant, it dares you to dance and deconstruct. It’s a trim, explosive collection of songs that suggests these four will be cranking out hits for years to come. It’s time to get Dumb.