Deaf Institute, Manchester
If you cross Phil Spector's 60s girl groups with west-coast pop, then throw in British C86 indie and the Jesus and Mary Chain's bittersweet walls of noise, you probably end up with California's Dum Dum Girls. The all-girl signings to Sub Pop also have an equally crafted look, favouring heavy black mascara, fringes, sullen pouts, black and white guitars, tiny black skirts and, for statuesque bassist Bambi, a dress so short it barely covers her stockings and suspenders.
If the idea is to have people gawping, it works. It's hard to remember a gig where so many salivating males ? who can't all be professional photographers ? take photographs. When the girls in the crowd start snapping, too, Bambi comments, "All these flash bulbs are making it like a psychedelic experience on stage."
Well, it saves on a lightshow, which otherwise consists of a solitary red light to create the atmosphere of a seedy 60s club. With Siouxsie-voiced Dee-Dee and flanking front girls concentrating on their three-part harmonies, movement on stage comes via tubthumping drummer Sandy ? so hyperactive she may well be sitting on a spring.
They have Primitives-style fuzzy pop songs to burn, but beneath the style lurks substance. Their potential hinges on slower, more haunting songs like the sublime, darker-Ronettes style Take Care of My Baby. Perhaps the eerily beautiful Baby Don't Go ? a chilling tale of orphaned loss and societal rejection ? is just too personal to play. Instead, they encore with Manchester sons the Smiths' There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, and, with no irony whatsoever, those flashbulbs keep on popping.
Leeann Tweeden Bali Rodriguez Izabella Miko Cameron Diaz Sofía Vergara
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