4 out of 5

Label: Big Cat

Produced by: Stephen Malkmus

If I were going to conjure up a 90s indie guitar pop band starring Shannon Wright and produced by Stephen Malkmus… It would exactly be Dreamette.  Which isn’t a slight: this is a particular niche I didn’t know I’d want filled until hearing it, and getting swept up in the head-bobbing jangle of it, twisted by Wright’s penchant for darker lyrics and occasionally arresting diversions into distortion.  That being said, “90s indie guitar pop” groups were a dime-a-dozen post Pavement, and there’s definitely a sense of the genre limiting the album’s potential at points – opener “Down,” for example, is catchy, but in a very generic way, and if you don’t know to tune in to what Wright is saying, her downright pleasant delivery could easily be mistaken for that of various other cute girl/boy college rockers of the time, uncombed hair and unkempt clothes and whatever else thoughts of 90s indie brings to mind for you.  But followup Sugar Coated’s Cali pop energy immediately shushes way the opener’s gazey haze, enough so that you’re tuned in to listen more closely to ‘Tease,’ and the surprisingly crass but brilliant ‘Sad Eyes.’

Still, the album is too happy to dip back into that college vibe at various points, and knowing what we know now of Wright’s output, these tracks sound like shackles, holding the music and approach onto a bed of uneven smiles and clean guitar riffs.  It’s interesting to wonder how this would have sounded had I heard it first, in the same impossible-to-say sense of wondering what I’d think of Malkmus – whose hand we can also question as to its involvement in shaping the direction of Dreamette – if I’d heard his solo output first before Slanted and Enchanted.

The cover art and restrained scope of Dreamette make it, to an extent, a relic of its time.  Not that that prevents it from being an excellent example of that time, a run-time filled with notable and catchy tracks.  And the surprising aggressiveness that rears its head at moments – as in closer Waiting – and the deviousness doled out of Wright’s lyrics-writin’ pen – certainly hint of further possibilities, which thankfully we got to see fulfilled (and expanded upon) with Shannon’s solo career.