Next, a band of Cambodian pop revivalists from L.A….
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Madeleine Lee: My friend from back home had put “Chnam Oun Dop-Pram Muy” by Ros Sereysothea on a birthday mix for me, adding, “I know you’re not turning 16, but it’s good.” I agreed, so I put it on at another friend’s house while we were cooking. Someone said, “Is this Dengue Fever?” No, I don’t know who that is. “Oh, maybe they covered it. It sounds like them.” This could be an introduction for a whole essay on what Dengue Fever are doing sounding like Ros Sereysothea, and whether that’s ethically sound or not, and What It Means. But I’m just going to keep my assessment at face value: One of the sad things about an artist disappearing, whether it’s by a band breaking up or by more sinister means, is that no one will make music like them anymore. Dengue Fever sound like the artists they’re paying homage to, but they’re not a replica; they’re what that music sounds like being played in 2015 by musicians from LA. I think that’s a better and more honest way of paying tribute.
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Jessica Doyle: I listened to The Deepest Lake aware of a certain tension — more specifically, myself tensing as I listened to it, though I couldn’t say why — and I wonder if it’s not because the band faces a particularly unusual challenge as it progresses. To wit: it makes sense, and is laudable, for Dengue Fever to move beyond Cambodian-pop-rock covers (example: here they are in 2007, covering Ros Serey Sothea’s classic “I’m Sixteen”). And in “No Sudden Moves” they sound more loose and jazzy than committed to traditional pop standards. But then that raises the question: if Dengue Fever is closer to an ensemble than a pop band, where does that leave Chhom Nimol’s voice? Not just that it’s gorgeous, which it is, and not just that she could cover the older songs beautifully, because she can, but her voice — influenced by Khmer being her first language, and by her training as a singer — is the link between Dengue Fever and the songs of 1960s Phnom Penh; her voice is what makes Dengue Fever’s covers less an overtaking and more a resurrection for those songs. Emphasize her voice too much, and Dengue Fever risks becoming Chhom Nimol and the Dudebros, which is reductive; but making it just another instrument in the ensemble errs too far in the opposite direction. In “No Sudden Moves” the answer is for Chhom Nimol to weave in and out, now stretching out the notes, now rapping, now seeming to fade a bit behind the horns, now springing out in front of them. She still has pride of place, but there’s space for the horns and the percussion and the experimentation. The band’s stretching out in different directions doing as much as anything else to make the music that inspired them part of a living tradition.
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Edward Okulicz: There are notes when Chhom Nimol’s voice makes me double take and think “wait, Nina Persson sings in Khmer?” Which isn’t as cool as that foreboding but propulsive baseline but it’s pretty cool. Would be perfect as background music leading up to a big action scene in a movie, preferably as loud as possible.
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Juana Giaimo: There is a longing and mournful feeling in the voice that contrasts with the brass and the percussion and gives “No Sudden Moves” a lot of — sorry — movement. But I just wish I could enjoy the vocals: while the singing is too afflicted, the spoken words are rather playful and none of it is convincing enough to tell me the mood of the song.
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Patrick St. Michel: A sweltering psych-pop throwback at its most interesting when it feels like it might collapse in on itself.
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Megan Harrington: I’ve gotten better about this as I’ve gotten older, but one of my life’s great passions aged 11 to 29 was touching every fabric in the store. It was such an overwhelming silent thrill, so singular to me and the particular situation of my fingertips and the material beneath them. I get that same sensation listening to “No Sudden Moves,” cashmere and silk and denim and corduroy; so many tiny fibers, so many epidermal cells.
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Jonathan Bogart: To the degree I’ve come to regard practically all revivalists with suspicion, it’s a sort of protective cover against my own too-often uncritical regard for the past. Which has fuck-all to do with Dengue Fever, whose noirish, perfectly-pitched blend of East and West is striking and endlessly listenable.
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Brad Shoup: It’s a whole country over, but large swaths of this reminds me of luk thung. Certainly not the rappish part — that sounds like Ana Tijoux — but the expert spy movie push-and-pull, the bari sax and locked-in backbeat that just doesn’t work when I hear it from the Dap-Tone camp. And definitely Chhom Nimol’s cruising-altitude vocal, unbound to the lush fauna beneath her, but still its prime mover.
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Alfred Soto: With horns suggesting The English Beat’s “Run” and a prominent dub-influenced bass line, “No Sudden Moves” honors all kinds of herky-jerk spasms. Not feverish exactly, but sick enough.
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