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MagnetFeb 21, 2014Once it works its way through your ears, Too True won't leave your head anytime soon. [No. 106, p.56]
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Jan 28, 2014The new Too True not only sounds more self-assured and cohesive, but it also channels the more recent past.
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Jan 24, 2014Too True proves that Dum Dum Girls are as relevant today as they were six years ago because they know that evolution is the key to survival. This is their sound, the sound of today, and they wear it well.
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Feb 7, 2014Too True preserves what makes Dum Dum Girls great, while pushing the band to brilliant new heights.
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Jan 28, 2014Sleek and sophisticated, this third full-length careens from muscular blasts of ’80s guitar rock (“In the Wake of You”) to spectral ballads (“Are You Okay?”).
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Jan 27, 2014A few chords, a clear melody and succinct verse-chorus-bridge structures are filled with darkly allusive lyrics and floated amid gauzy, sweeping guitar effects.
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Jan 27, 2014No matter how many times Dee Dee alludes to heartbreak and ritualistic evil, Too True is a joyful career pinnacle.
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Jan 27, 2014Split between uptempo rockers like "Little Minx" and "Evil Blooms," powerful and hooky midtempo tracks like "Rimbaud Eyes," and streaked-eyeliner ballads like "Under These Hands," the record has a dynamic flow and balance of sounds and moods that previous albums haven't been able to accomplish.
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MojoJan 23, 2014Rather than being derivative, this album is a perfect pop balance of cliche and rawness, with mythic ambition and songs that make you a three-minute hero. [Feb 2014, p.95]
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UncutJan 23, 2014Too True is a bold album. [Feb 2014, p.73]
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Jan 23, 2014Working again with pop Svengali Richard Gottehrer and the Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner, DDG find a nice middle ground between their signature detachment and a classic pop sensibility.
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Feb 10, 2014Written in part after Dee Dee was put on vocal rest, Too True infuses the band’s eyeliner-heavy songs with moments of quiet reflection that bite almost as hard as those delivered with snarl.
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Jan 28, 2014For now, the best way to sum it up would be “one small step for music, one giant leap for Dum Dum Girls.”
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Jan 23, 2014Dee Dee Penny wears her heart on one sleeve and her influences on the other, and Too True is translucent with both.
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Jan 27, 2014There are clichés, and there are exalted clichés, and Dee Dee at her best reminds you of this distinction.
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Feb 10, 2014If you enjoyed their last album, you'll likely be game for Too True. If they lost you after their first album, you won't be won back. Maybe this will be a grower for me, but it's not an immediate year-end contender for me.
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Jan 31, 2014While the production and moodiness of the record are strong, the emotion that made much of their previous records such a pleasure has been a bit sapped.
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Jan 29, 2014Although Too True is not Dum Dum Girls’ finest hour--that would still be the cathartic Only in Dreams--it remains a commendable shift from an artist on the verge of being swallowed up by memory.
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Jan 29, 2014At its core, it's just unabashed pop songwriting with some influences firmly worn on the sleeve.
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Jan 28, 2014Songs like "Rimbaud Eyes" and "Evil Blooms" more than live up to their fashion-goth titles. But Penny is best opening up her sound on big, searching ballads.
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Jan 27, 2014By drinking deep from the coolest records and the hippest poets, Penny succeeds in beginning a new chapter for her band.
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Jan 24, 2014If, like me, you agree Too True should be taken in smaller doses and divvied up into playlists, so be it. It should still be taken. Great pop is a terrible thing to waste.
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Jan 24, 2014Interestingly, the album itself isn't “too true”--rather, it’s just true enough.
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Jan 23, 2014As with so much of Too True, it's more Flowers in the Attic than Flowers of Evil. But it's also part of a glorious art-goth tradition: bookish rockers chasing pop into the dark, deep within the Hong Kong gardens, where all cats are grey.
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Jan 23, 2014Though this turn towards all-out pop music doesn't breed inherently bad music (in fact, it's quite pleasant), but it's not the reason we fell in love with Dum Dum Girls.
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Apr 9, 2014At a half hour, Too True might seem brief, but Penny makes the most of every minute.
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Q MagazineJan 28, 2014An engaging, easy on the senses combination of murk and shine, then. [Feb 2014, p.115]
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Jan 27, 2014Penny has garage-rock form, but Too True is a light-footed, echo-heavy pop makeover with a 1980s gloss, frothy but forthright.
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Jan 27, 2014Too True is a decent enough album and one which ends more strongly than it begins. But it isn't as good as 'Only In Dreams' and because of that, it can't help but feel a bit underwhelming.
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Jan 23, 2014Too True is as squeamish as it is smouldering.
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Jan 23, 2014It’s another enjoyable album from a band quietly proving to be one of the more consistent groups around.
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Jan 23, 2014Tonally, it falls somewhere between the shoegazey aggression of I Will Be and Only in Dreams’ hazy hooks, but it’s lacking the former’s force of character and the latter’s infectious melodies.
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Feb 4, 2014Restraint and getting to the point are valuable commodities in music, but Too True misfires in this regard.
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Mar 12, 2014Too True offers the very definition of postmodern pastiche: a collection of ultimately empty gestures to previous forms.
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Feb 10, 2014The band needs to play to its strengths, rather than a production style. This is not a band that sounds good with buried instruments. This is a group that sound best when they are in your face.
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Feb 13, 2014It’s “Lost Boys and Girls Club,” “Cult of Love,” and “Trouble Is My Name” (“Trouble is my name/ Is it your name too?”), endless clichés in songwriting, narrative, subject, and sound.
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Feb 5, 2014Too True amounts to little more than a succession of cliches and wall-to-wall empty stylisation, with the femme four-piece seemingly unaware that mimicry is not art, and nor is seriousness the same as being a serious artist.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 29
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Mixed: 9 out of 29
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Negative: 1 out of 29
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Feb 13, 2014
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Feb 4, 2014
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Apr 23, 2014