Send "Double Dagger " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 The Thrill Jockey Records bio that accompanies Masks, the follow-up EP to last year's exhilarating More, includes a list of 74 bands to which Baltimore trio Double Dagger have been compared. From Weezer to At the Drive-In, Fugazi, the Presidents of the United States of America to Sonic Youth, the index makes clear this band bashes out anthems that recall post-punk and alternative rock heroes. No, it's not exactly original stuff, but, at their best, Double Dagger feel fresh and urgent. Each song is like another alarm clock ringing.That makes "Imitation is the Most Boring Form of Flattery", Masks' opening shot, the perfect gambit. Like a thick shot of Red Medicine, Double Dagger rises into a scrim of noise. "Look out, kids! We're all in danger. Our history has no future. Don't be just another repeater. Our history has no future," singer Nolen Strals and bassist Bruce Willen shout together, offering the hook as a preamble. Strals rails against those who simply offer pale versions of old records for an easy ride into mass consumption. But Strals questions himself here, too, especially given that list of inspirations: "You don't see the past as a source of inspiration/ You just have it sat at your final destination." At first, I misheard this lyric, so that it felt as if he were contemplating his own guilt, allowing for interpretation: Is it that when you accept your influences at face value, you die, or is it that you haven't reached creative fulfillment until you acknowledge that art is bigger than your own ideas? But given the list of comparisons the band recognizes, it works more as a credo-- never be satisfied with sounding too much like anyone. If you do, beware: "I guess how it went is just how it goes," he recapitulates, shrugging it off and barreling ahead....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Somewhere along its evolution, punk rock got a little big for its boots and a little too complicated. The Ramones only needed some attitude and three chords; 30 years later Green Day write concept albums for 14-year-olds. So step right in, in Double Dagger, Baltimore-based art-punk noise terrorists with a penchant for dry slacker wit and prolonged tinnitus. The line-up - bass, singer, drums - strips this rock business to its primal roots. But this isn't your standard high school punk outfit: founding members bass player Bruce Willen and singer Nolen Strals are graphic designers by trade and their design agency Post Typography - seriously - designed the differing LP and CD covers. The pair even wrote a book, Lettering & Type, published by no less than Princeton Architectural Press. Always good to have a backup plan. By all rational expectations, Double Dagger shouldn't work on any level. But on new EP Masks, their brand of angsty noise just does work and spectacularly so. Opener 'Imitation is the Most Boring Kind of Flattery' is Sonic Youth gone postal, displaying the same cooler-than-you, arch ironic stance of 'I was So Bored I Wanted to Hang Myself on the Dancefloor', from 2007's Ragged Rubble album. You can almost see Strals rolling his eyes as he declares: "We discovered to way to mass affection is to repeat the best parts of your record collection..."...full text |
| Cloudspeakers |
| omewhere along its evolution, punk rock got a little big for its boots and a little too complicated. The Ramones only needed some attitude and three chords; 30 years later Green Day write concept albums for 14-year-olds.So step right in, in Double Dagger, Baltimore-based art-punk noise terrorists with a penchant for dry slacker wit and prolonged tinnitus....full text |
Double Dagger lyrics
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