Dummy, 'Daffodils'

Your mileage may vary, but pop music should explode on contact. Let the melodies glide into the stratosphere on a Hypercolor rocket, sure, but there also needs to be a collision of sight and sound. Dummy's "Daffodils" is a groovy refinement of the LA band's influences — namely, the unclassifiable and impossibly cool pop music of Stereolab, Broadcast and Silver Apples — set against trebly guitar jangle, droning organ, slyly funky drums and conversational vocals between Nathan O'Dell (formerly of the Baltimore dream-pop band Wildhoney) and Emma Maatman. "Daffodils" has a gelatinous-yet-static quality: It drones in place even as it mutates in real time — especially in the last 30 seconds, when a squeal of feedback announces the deliriously loud noise-pop denouement.

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