ALBUM // Dumb Things LP

Post by Misha

Do you remember the day you turned 16 and got your license and you got to feel for the first time the feeling of pulling onto the highway alone? The feeling of acceleration in the pit of your stomach. Blasting Rehab or whatever you were blasting when you were 16.

The intoxication of going away from one place but having not yet arrived at, or even totally decided upon, a place to go next. How it felt in that moment like the discovery of freedom. Only the dimmest awareness that we’d be chasing this feeling for the foreseeable forever.

Anyway possibly the only thing that’s really nice about living in Los Angeles surrounded by these alloyed metal beasts and their attendant ribbons of concrete is getting to feel that feeling every day. On my way to work, or a meeting, the bank, whatever otherwise deadening destination. In the morning I sit in my driveway for an extra minute with Spotify open, deciding who I want to be for the time in between who I’ve decided I have to be. And I bask in the briefest glimmer of self determination that is sunshine, a green light, and good speakers.

Lately this album accompanies me wherever I go, soundtracking a good faith agreement with a future in which I get to where I’m going happy and in one piece. I don’t know, there’s just something about the jangly guitars and analog warmth that indulges that kind of brazen optimism.

Dumb Things is a country-burnt pop guitar band from Brisbane. The presser for this album, out now via French cassette label Hidden Bay Records, calls it “scruffy enough to get stopped at the door, but charming enough to talk its way in,” a description which I adore very much. Buy the album here.