Dora Flood

Dream Out Your Window

(self-released)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

This disc starts with a nice dreamy flow out of the speakers that falls somewhere between the more psychedelic side of Brian Jonestown Massacre and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. There’s a touch of dark ethereal gloom that moves in and out of the drifting chords that makes me think of the Swans “Can’t Find My Way Home” as well. Without even noticing it, the disc moves through a few songs, leading me almost too quickly to the halfway point, and I realize that while the music and the moods that Dora Flood are setting up are wonderful, there isn’t a lot of variation in the direction.  “The Message” has a sort of slow and lazy, almost jaded Black Rebel Motorcycle Club feel to it, which really, is not a bad thing.

Looking back at an earlier album and an earlier review I had written about these San Francisco dream-popsters, I notice that there is a definite link between the albums, but where “We Live Now” had more of the grit on the shoes, “Dream Out Your Window” has a little more light shining in the gaze. There has to be a way to take these two albums and move them together for a truly epic and brilliant album, but for now, it’s going to have to be a little back and forth between the shifting soundscapes.

The solidity of the beats, the drums keeping the music moving solid and steady across the highways of your mind and the bass pushing it tight but velvety, helps to keep you from drifting too far out, even when the sparkles and swirls of the guitar are hitting very far-out. While the dreamy Ride moments and Beatles-on-drugs moments keep coming, shifting slightly form song to song, at times there is a little different wave that crashes quietly against the pictures being painted. The little new wave flourishes in “Mantra”, the dance move touched keyboards in “Present Is A Place”, both bring the album out of the indistinguishable flow I had first heard, and once again, I am seduced by the dreams of these musicians.