Glasgow x London trio Dama Scout first caught my eye at one of the DIY Hello 2017 showcases at the Old Blue Last in January, and I was immediately taken by their eclectic take on post-punk, via those two well-trodden touchstones shoegaze and slacker-rock. One minute guitars are squalling, pained feedback induced yelps, the next they’re carrying you along in a cloud of echo and reverb. This juxtaposition first witnessed live carries itself into new single ‘Paper Boy’.
Based around the themes of invisible friends and lucid dreaming, it’s no wonder the sound and precise intention of the group is hard to place. Like a dream, everything seems just about normal and in place on first glance (/listen), yet on closer inspection there’s an eerie quality to the individual building blocks in Dama Scout’s generated sonic reality. A landscape in which Eva Liu’s sing-song vocals bounce around effortlessly between the drum and bass foundations, twirling and intertwining with the guitar top-lines.
Everything is as quirkily off-kilter as it is lackadaisically smooth; this unpredictability means that rounding things off with a self-destructive, noise-obscured grinding slow down feels like the natural step, despite its inherent ridiculousness.
The new single ‘Paper Boy’ is released through RIP Records. Purchase on iTunes here.
