This has been sitting around as a draft for more than a year now.  A quick track-by-track review of the Dum Dum Girls' September 2011 album "Only in Dreams" from last year on Sub Pop records.  Not ultra-heavy or consistently deep, but very enjoyable and interesting.  Definitely recommended.  It mixes bouncy guitar pop-rock with wisps of doowop, washes of surf and even occasional smears of grunge, quite organically and effectively.  Before the track-by-track comments, the official Youtube stream.

Always Looking kicks things off in style with a grungish main theme, and a slightly Grace Slick-ish vocal sound.  I have a feeling of having heard something like this from Mudhoney somewhere...perhaps it's a nod to the Sub Pop pedigree.  A poppier interlude ("I never felt a beat in my heart / till you made it start"), more reminiscent of Blondie, leads to a bit of tasty surf guitar.  Bedroom Eyes begins with a very pretty, sing-song melody in major in the guitar intro, then swings right into a peppy, uptempo verse, anchored by the superb chorus ("Oh, I need your bedroom eyes").  A new musical and episode late in the song ("you will never sleep again") tops things off with a bit of a triumphant feeling, and is nice structural touch, leading back to the main verse/chorus sequence again.

Just a Creep is a bit enigmatic---we don't learn who the creep is or what he's done.  Is this the same guy whose bedroom eyes she needed in the previous song?  "It upset me to learn you act this way / It must be hard to be yourself each day / you act so sweet / but you don't cut deep / you're just a little creep".  Excellent surf guitar obbligato.   In My Head is another song of separation and longing, but set to relatively upbeat and catchy music.  It's also a very well crafted song, with a full-fledged verse, chorus, and bridge, and interesting substructures within them.  The verse is set off by a doowopish chorus ("Oh don't you tell me / I am your baby/over the phone/it don't feel right/Come home and kiss me/ tell me you miss me / come do it right").  A superb song, perhaps the album's best.  Do we have a lyrical (though certainly not musical) nod to the Stone Roses here? ("I just wanna be adored")   Heartbeat is another excellent song with plenty of fifties doowop and pop influence, and a lighter feeling overall.  In general the drumming could lean a bit less on the two-eighth-notes on two / one-eighth on four backbeat, although it's very appropriate for many of these songs.  Musically Caught in One seems to continue in the mildly melancholic but peppy vein, though if you listen to the lyrics things are getting a bit heavier...there seems to be pain, and an unfaithful lover, involved.

With Coming Down we have, just in time, a more marked change in musical style... we have here an example of a minor-key guitar anthem, in a mood of nostalgia, yearning, regretful leaving, and wallowing in all of the above.  An interlude with a different feel leads to a higher-pitched, somewhat more triumphal sounding section ("there I go...").  Harmonically, and in mood, the song is related to Knockin' on Heaven's Door.  The guitar then lays out for a heavier bit in which the singer finally gets more specific about the source of this mood ("if you only had a heart").  For an example of how good a singer Dee Dee is, just listen to her control over the changing timbre as she stretches out the word "start". Simple and effective.

Wasted Away is again fairly uptempo, but remains emotionally engaged, and keeps up the theme of missing a lover, if a bit ambiguously ("I'd rather waste away than see you only in dreams / but there's nothing to say / at the end of the day you're wasting away").  Fuzzy, ringing guitars provide a foil.  Teardrops on My Pillow begins in a pop-punkish kind of vein, reminiscent of Hüsker Dü or some of Bob Mould's other projects, then "Teardrops on My Pillow" is intoned in a definite fifties-pop context. Hold your Hand ("I wish it wasn't true but there's nothing I can do except hold your hand") explores yet another vein of fifties vocal pop, slower but with a surging chorus ("But you'd do anything to bring her back").

I was afraid this immediately appealing album might pale on repeated listenings, but so far, it's just gotten better.  There's a lot of interesting detail to savor in the songwriting, and the vocal harmonies just get tastier.