Album Review: Dungeonesse - Dungeonesse

Dungeonesse is two musicians from Baltimore, Maryland. Singer Jenn Wasner, of indie poppers Wye Oak, and synth pop outfit White Life's Jon Ehrens must have more in common than geography, because this album really sounds like one born out of deep friendship.

Put simply, it's just beat-driven electro-pop, with typically lush though never awe-inspiring female vocals. The beats are solid and downright groovy on Cadillac, and the playful Four Tet-inspired electronic instrumentation more than gets the job done, but there's something more here. The album is absolutely 'pop'; it's dripping with hooks, is danceable start to finish and has that abstract quality of being too catchy and never memorable all at once. The electronica throbs and pounds throughout, leaving Wasner to occasionally struggle to find dominance with her chorus woos.

For all its inhuman and abstract cold electronica, the lyrics actually err on the side of saccharine and dorky-loveliness. Take opener, Shucks' refrain: “I know it doesn't look like much/But it's love/And I know that it's good enough”. Take this artistically for what you will, but it certainly does add a necessary and human touch to the whole album, which could easily fall into a mid-'80s chasm of Kraftwerkian nonsense if it embraced lifeless electronica as powerfully, and frustratingly amateur-ish, as it could have.

At a click under 35 minutes, this debut certainly doesn't outstay its welcome, but it still could have been trimmed a little. Not that any one song is an outright flop, but none of them shine with the capabilities certain individual moments imply the duo can. If we hear more from these two, here's hoping they strike gold.