Dragonette… Oh What Would Daddy Think? (NSFW)

It’s hard to find a band that can turn music into the audio equivalent of velvet. Decadent, rich, luxurious and pleasing to the ear, Dragonette – the part-Canadian/part-British electro-pop band – manages to not only produce some of the most captivating sounds I’ve ever heard but also throw in a half naked teenage trollop for free.

That’s right – a trollop, and one that drunkenly parades around in that remarkable velvet like she owns it.

I’ve yet to decide whether the produced songs are actually good or not. I listen fairly regularly to their aptly named album “Galore” so common sense would say that, yes, at some level I find the music to be “good,” and yet I’m just not sure… The lyrics are across the board laughable, and since lyrics make up a lot of what I find entertaining in music my opinion of Dragonette sits in limbo.

The following is the first verse from the first song in the album, “I Get Around:”

Nine am
In your bedroom
The radio alarm clock
is set for soon
I know you friends
and you know mine too
you don’t tell on me I won’t tell on you
I get around

Seriously? What the hell is that? I can’t rightly tell if it’s Martina Sorbara’s delivery or whether the lyrics just simply don’t mesh with the music behind them. Either way… Eesh.

“The radio alarm clock / is set for soon” *twitch*

Congress knows there are more absurd lyrics floating around, but they usually seem to at least jive with the overall structure of the song much better. Dragonette’s seem to be the audio equivalent of shoving a drunk, topless co-ed into the Boston Pops; everybody will keep listening to the Pops, but they’ll assuredly be distracted when the co-ed falls flat on her face.

The general conclusion that I’ve come to is that Martina has a bigger libido than most porn stars. Every song is about sex, men, using men, using sex, cheating, or generally screwing for the hell of it, and while I’m generally enthralled (I am a man after all) the damn lyrics practically assassinate whatever interest I get close to forming.

But I still come back and listen!

Martina’s father was the finance secretary of the Canadian Province of Ontario. Random fact, but one that shocked the hell out of me when I found out – if Martina were the child of an American politician she’d have every feminist, traditionalist, religious fundamentalist, and opposing party politician out for her father’s head because of her verbal orgies. This is generally because American politics are messed the hell up, but even if they weren’t I’d still be surprised that no flack was thrown from some disgruntled curmudgeon… And it seems like there hasn’t been – at least not loudly.

Tangents aside, I’ll likely keep listening to Dragonette on and off and never really form a solid opinion of them. I hope the next album (assuming there is one) will sport a better vocabulary, but I’m not holding my breath. They just don’t seem like the kind of band that will change drastically.

What to expect…

Regal and decadent tones coated in a glaze of saucy words and bad adjectives. The scene will somehow impress upon you an era of well kept big hair and black and white movies without becoming old fashioned. I think it’s the presence of the artificial and mildly mutated brass in a bulk of the songs.

What to take away?

Hopefully an idea of whether you like the music or not…

What drink to pair Dragonette with?

Vodka tonic with lime – quick buzz, and if you have enough of them you may just find yourself in an unfamiliar bed the next morning with an alarm clock set to “soon.”

My favorite song?

“Favorite” of course being used loosely, I’d have to say “Black Limousine.” It surprisingly doesn’t involve sex (at least not directly) and tells the tale of a woman being courted by someone with a black limousine. The lyrics are the best on the album…