Dummy’s third full-length release tasks itself with offering an affirmation of life, spelled out in no uncertain terms through the thwack of DnB drumlines, abrasive distortion, and incisive songwriting. On do you love the color of the sky?, the L.A. band brings together space rock, drone, and UK electronic music into a dizzying sound that seems to stop just short of a roiling boil in its rebuke of stagnation.
Though Dummy have always embraced a spaced-out, electronic sound, their instruments sound more synthetic than ever before: Guitars read synth-like, keys seem inorganic, and precise looping and sampling bring an insular feel to the live-band setup that adds a level of tension to the groove. Like 2024’s Free Energy, do you love the color of the sky? draws inspiration from the carefree glee of Madchester, even as it explores more unsettling subject matter. The stuttering bloom of “Full Spectrum Dominance” involves big beat bass and hooky melodies, despite keyboardist and vocalist Emma Maatman’s ominous proclamations that how there’s “gonna be no lawn left to mow.” But even in its quietest moments, the music feels volatile: less reminiscent of Madchester’s freewheeling spirit, and more as if every second of calm has been carefully engineered to implode.
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The band frequently steers the poppy songwriting offroad by leaning into distortion and ambience, creating moments of both near-mania and hazy unease. Opening track “April Limousine” is both frantic and stark, using pulsating guitar lines as a swirling, atmospheric backdrop for a maddening breakbeat and Maatman’s reverbed vocals. It feels both dense and minimal, as if one could crank up the opacity on a dream-pop song. The band’s propensity for texture works even better when elements shift in the span of a single track; the plastic sheen of “Touch the Perfect Speed”’s opening riffs give way to eardrum-busting shoegaze blowout, feedback and all, by mid-song, before taking things back to where they started.