Words by Jason Lee. Photo by Tess Kramer.
Dynamics! Otherwise known as going from really soft to really loud or vice-versa. And then there’s musical texture which has to do with going from a bunch of instruments playing similar parts at once or maybe even in unison versus more divergent parts overlapping or even sometimes clashing. And don’t even get us started on musical timbre, sheesh. Anyway, it’s a trick of the trade to manipulate dynamics, texture, and timbre in ways that’re unpredictable and unexpected cuz that tends to evoke an emotional response whereas doing what’s expected or close to it may be reassuring and comforting and all but it can be pretty humdrum too when things are too predictable and really who wants their music to be humdrum cuz we paid good money for our feelings to be mercilessly manipulated…
…and if there’s anything Debbie Dopamine’s latest single “Marzipan” isn’t it’s “humdrum” seeing as over the course of its four-and-a-half minute running time there’s plenty of hum and plenty of drum but practically no “humdrum” as the song does more capricious bobbing and weaving that a drunk sailor on ketamine taking a weekend’s shore leave for the first time after years spent at sea starting off all hushed and etherial, swathed in a halo of droning sonic ambience leading up to a hypnotic, looping guitar motif as vocalist/guitarist Katie Ortiz sings in hushed tones about fragile lands and marzipan and “sticky hands go[ing] soft…warm beneath your lip gloss” soon moving into a fragile falsetto as the decision is made to stay home for the evening with unwashed hair as bassist Dylan LaPointe and drummer Zach Rescignano slowly enter the room…
Photo by Juliette Boulay
…at which point the spell breaks and the drone dissipates and Dylan takes over the main riff with ample use of the bass guitar’s upper register—a master of acrobatic melodicism as always—with Katie picking out a new spun sugar motif and is that glockenspiel we hear (!) with Zach finally making use of his snare drum and so it goes on like a flower slowly opening its petals to the rays of the sun and mind you there’s no real “verses” or “choruses” to be heard here like you’d hear in 99% of songs on the radio just a sort of slow burn like the fuse of a bomb you know is ready to go off at any moment but for the time being it’s more yearning and introspective and “quick to bruise and scared to lose”…
…and then as Katie repeats a newly introduced melancholic downward spiral chord progression Dylan makes some effects pedal-assisted discordant churning noises like a car ignition that won’t quite turn over and Zach inserts some tom-tom heavy drum fills and here we’re almost three minutes into this dreamlike mirage of a song and still we have no idea really where all of this is going which is what makes it so goddamn galvanizing and you guessed it emotional at which point Debbie’s Dopamine finallylets loose like we know they can and usually do laying into those four chords with frenzied abandon and if you don’t get a big hit of dopamine to the central nervous system from it well then you’ve got a steelier composition than we do…
…culminating in an intense machine-gun rat-a-tat-tat-tat climax that just as suddenly as it turned into a howling beast slouching towards bedlam with much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments drops back down to a state of extreme quietude (dynamics!) as Katie declares “I’d like to be confused” with the music obliging and tho’ it feels like we’re been blindfolded and spun in circles on the edge of a miles high cliff (edging!) secretly we like it and as the song glides to its conclusion we half expect another blow-up but it doesn’t come which makes us want to listen to the song over and over again and whatever just happened “there’s sugar everywhere” like we just binged on a whole tin full of marzipan that’s both sticky sweet and heavy as a brick with the resulting bellyache being well worth it…
…which is exactly as intended it would seem as Debbie Dopamine themselves describe it with “Ortiz’s self-assured lilts and turns of phrase guid[ing] the listener through a glistening kind of affection where questions of forever are sidelined in favor of simply being, that is, the sensuality of knowing there is nothing you’d rather do [as] the band meanders and grooves through the saccharine Arcadia, loosening and tightening its grip on the melodies like the hand of a lover, gentle and protective, every once in a while digging its nails into your wrist as if to say, ‘notice me, notice this” and we certainly do…
“Marzipan” released May 17, 2024
vocals, guitar, glockenspiel – Katie Ortiz
bass – Dylan LaPointe
drums – Zach Rescignano
engineered by Justin Pizzaforato
additional engineering by Zach Rescignano
mixed by Zach Rescignano
mastered by Brandon Vaccaro