Altsounds - The New Dress - Where Our Failures Are

The New Dress is duo from Brooklyn, NY comprised of guitarist/vocalist Bill Manning and Laura Fidler on vocals. Their take on indie-pop features the sound of jangly guitars and campfire vocal melodies that are sung in almost childlike manner. If you're familiar with the work of Beat Happening and the other early K Records bands, you'll have a pretty good idea of where I'm going. The rail thin guitars aren't strong enough to anchor Fidler's vocals here and the record starts to wear on you a few songs in. Tracks like "Where Our Failures Are" do show some promise but there isn't enough variety in the arrangements for them to truly shine.

A couple of songs do benefit from the sparse settings ("Thanks, Claire") but more often than not, it falls flat. Maybe the duo isn't comfortable in their skin yet. After all, they did throw in two cover songs onto the album. Luckily their cover of anarcho-folkie, Billy Bragg's "I Don't Need This Pressure, Ron," ends up working and does lend the collection some charm.

By Carlos Ramirez