Pre-Owned Good Songs for Bad People (CD 5400863027872) by Drab City

5400863027872. Pre-owned: Good condition. CD. Experimental pop musicians Christopher Dexter Greenspan, aka oOoOO, and Asia, better known by her solo project moniker Islamiq Grrrls, collaborated on an album in 2018 under their solo aliases (Faminine Mystique). They return two years later as Drab City with an equally arty, more retro-inflected project debut, Good Songs for Bad People. A distinctive blend of dub, exotica, and contemporary indie-electronic pop, its highly stylized, '70s-arthouse vibe is strongest on a track like "Working for the Men." It evokes the soundtrack of a faded color film, one full of jump cuts and unsmiling leads. The song's ethereal, meandering melody floats over a pattern of arpeggiated guitar, syncopated bass, rim-clicks, and ornamental flute built from yearning harmonic progressions. To set the stage for that, Good Songs for Bad People opens with a nearly 90-second instrumental prologue that plays like heavily warped vinyl ("Entering Drab City"). A more straightforward vintage pop entry is "Just Me & You," which pays tribute to the era of lovelorn harmony vocal groups and girl groups in 6/8 time. The album moves into glitchier territory toward the end, with the spacy dub and funk of "Live Free & Die When It's Cool." That track features Greenspan's lead vocal and ends with lengthy guitar and bass solos. Final track "Standing Where You Left Me" then begins with multiple electronic alarms and rhythmic blips before settling into a murky, organ-based lament by Asia. While a little unfocused stylistically, the recordings have a consistently dreamy, submerged sound quality that evokes a past life or at least an obscure record-store find. While the songs' narratives present Drab City as a disappointing destination full of broken hearts and gentrification, its immersive musical allure makes it worth the price of passage. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi