I'm behind on everything, so it must be November. This weekend must have been some kind of Throwback Tribute themed event, between the Lords of Altamont and now DAG. DAG is just another one of those discs that fell into my orbit during the crazy college radio days of 1998. They combine a careful study of 1970's funk and soul with some really clever lyrics. Add an involved producer (John Custer) and you get a pretty sharp album. It's hard not to like the stuff here, right from the get go. I mean, who can resist a song titled "Our Love Would Be Much Better (If I Gave a Damn About You)"? The grooves are tight and funky, culminating in the bass-heavy "Worldspinning" (still my favorite cut from the album), and it's hard to believe a song like "You Make Me Feel" wasn't getting airplay across the USA.
Alas, DAG, a North Carolina phenomenon, was already in decline by this album. Their debut, Righteous, was already four years in the rear-view mirror and pretty much all of the buzz had wore off long ago, so rather than building on a good thing, the band was pretty much back to square one with Apartment #635, no matter how good the songs were. An attempt to bring together songs from both albums on to an EP later in the year went nowhere and the band ceased in 1999, a true Lost Band from the 1990's, unable to get out of the decade alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment