Dressy Bessy - 'Electrified' (Collective) Released 25/07/05

Spasm inducing name aside, Dressy Bessy are a Denver four-piece specialising in retro power pop.  Cute and quite possibly high on Tartrazine (aka Sunny D, e-number fans), their debut album is firmly rooted in the past.  The Breeders past to be more specific.

While never as consummately catchy as the Deal sisters at their ‘Cannonball’ pomp, what the album lacks in diversity, it makes up for in rock solid consistency.  Opener ‘Second place’ is a stroppy little stomper in eyeliner, ebbing and flowing like the newly created Glastonbury Gorge.  Elsewhere, title track ‘Electrified’ ricochets like a pinball, its quirky guitar jangles and bass led breakdown sends you back to Lollapolooza circa 1995, Throwing Muses onstage with Belly up next.

But, like the Breeder girls after one decade of solid drug abuse, once the effervescent fizz and sparkle has been dusted on the opening salvo, there’s not much left to play with.  Sure, the guitars spike nicely and the vocals coo prettily over the top, but there’s little variation, there’s nothing that screams ‘holyshitthisthebestthingsinceslicedcrack.’

It’s not a bad thing that it persistently plunders from the cream of the nineties pop, but by track 7 and ‘Hello Hello,’ you’re wondering if the pony knows any other tricks.  With every song wombling in at a regulation 180 seconds, there’s also little room for dynamism when the formula is so strict.  ‘Try Try Try Again,’ does offer some hope though towards the end with its grandiose rock sentiments sending you scuttling for your lighter.  But by the end of ‘Call It Even,’ you’re left wishing that this was a gloriously spunky EP rather than an overweight and stretch mark strewn album.