It's neat, neat, neat that both Dum Dum Girls and this reissue, reissue, repackage of Slumberland's debut rerelease from 1999 are both out the same week (this one). Black Tambourine were the late 80s American neo-C86 root-band for femme-led raw-sounding indie, based on the mostly-on-tape bands that spread like mushrooms in the wake of the New Musical Express mix-tape giveaway under that number-name (C86, a follow up to 1981's NME's C81).

See, we all read the damned British papers back then. They really kept up on (small, cool) things, and promoted tiny labels and bands with minority voices whilst taking the PR piss out of pre-grunge machismo rock of the big statements. The way that screamo would later appeal to baggy-clothed boys prone to caterwauling about "nothing left inside!" but about a decade earlier (girls always mature faster than boys), the women-driven jangle-fuzz concrete island of these groups were bound to inspire gals from Washington D.C., to Olympia, the former giving the scene Black Tambourine, made up of Pam Berry, Archie Moore, Brian Nelson, and Mike Schulman. (Berry would later go on to help create foundational fanzine ChickFactor and Moore would land his band Velocity Girl on Sub Pop, more dialectically indie-pop moments threading into the 90s rock scene.) This happened in the heart of very-male Dischord territory, but it did not go unnoticed by many on both sides of the Atlantic, and back across the states. A little bit of Orange Juice swirled in a whole lot the Jesus and Mary Chain, it was new and tasty.

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Oh, my friend, I am so sorry. I have become one of them too. Ga-ga for the new indie pop blog romance. I know we mocked them, the length of the band name, the way people jumped on the bandwagon. But who could resist "Shit-faced, following a dark place, drinking in the last days" as an opening line to a song as tinkly, moany, sparkly, and swooning as anything The Cure or Echo & The Bunnymen ever released in their (best) eschatological sweep-rock periods? And then: "Mystery looks just like a mumble mumble, bumble-fuck, mumble." I mean, bumble-fuck. He really uses that word in a song poppier than heroin. Yeah.

As if lyrics mattered, but they do. It's a deciding factor, and they can't just be clever lines, there was to be a story. In this case in opener "Higher Than The Stars" it's a Freudian filial wish-fulfillment nightmare ("She was like a brother, until you dropped another / in the back of her mother's car"). That is, the protagonist and his adored seem like creepy kids in a "Flowers in the Attic" scenario, with Gothic, unrequited, imagined-incestuous love at its heart-scraping core. Kip Berman is at the center as Alex Naidus, Kurt Feldman, and Peggy Wang-East musically swirl about him like girls around a maypole. Ashes to ashes, indeed.

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