the ditty bops: summer rains

The track record of romantically attached couples in music is a mixed one. Either the relationship or the musical project suffers as the creative and logistical tensions of a life of recording and touring inevitably surface. You would maybe expect even more of the latter if you’d chosen to tour across the USA by pedal power alone, in line with your environmental principles. The fact that The Ditty Bops’ relationship survived their 2006 bicycle tour to see the release of their third album Summer Rains probably tells you all you need to know.

Eccentricity is an overused term, but in the case of Abby DeWald and Amanda Barrett it’s probably justified. In their case. however, it’s of the inspired kind and while it would have been hard to imagine Sonny & Cher hopping aboard a tandem during their heyday, for The Ditty Bops it kind of makes sense. Summer Rains finds them once again plundering a joyously antiquated musical store cupboard, emerging with modern takes on cabaret, vaudeville, Django Reinhardt-esque gypsy jazz, folk, swing, ragtime, and even a hint of slack-keyed Hawaii thrown in for good measure. With the help of producer Mitchell Froom, the Bops have concocted a flavoursome album that finds them in a more laidback mood, inspired in part, they say, by their decision to stay at home and cultivate their vegetable patch.

The title track opener is a bittersweet, South Seas-flavoured take on the effects of global warming. The ragtime of ‘Skinny Bones’ asserts a defiantly bouncy credo for square peg living, while ‘What Happened To The Radio’ bemoans the corporate conformity of American broadcasting, underneath a deceptive veneer of straight-up country. The moonlit lovers’ kitsch of ‘I Stole Your Wishes’ conjures up images of roses and birthday candles and the intense everyday intimacies of romantic attachment, but it’s in the gentle swing of ‘When She’s Comin’ Home’ that the album finds its highlight. It’s a joyful and complete piece of clever, lush harmonied pop, whereas ’Feel From The Outside’ falls just the wrong side of lethargic, their signature melodic complexity overwhelming their ear for the catchy.

Elsewhere, there is more than just a hint of Sergeant Pepper on ‘The Weeds Are Winning’, in which the pair poke fun at the short-sighted absurdity of the human race wrapped up in a futile battle with the evolutionary survivors, the rats and the weeds. “Strange birds, strange birds are we,” they sing, marvelling perhaps that, in our culture of hyper-consumption, it is they who are perceived as oddities for their lifestyle and professional choices.

The Ditty Bops are a truly independent, truly different act whose principles and way of life influence and inform the music they make. Summer Rains leaves you feeling as if you’ve just spent an hour sitting in the DeWald and Barrett kitchen being fed something from their garden while they play you excerpts from their rich collection of musical influences. It probably shouldn’t work, but it does. If album number three is anything to go by there’s still plenty of (bicycle) mileage in The Ditty Bops brand.

[Green Witch Society; February 5, 2008]

Written by: Martyn Clayton

Tags: summer rains, the ditty bops

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 2:08 am and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.