You know how there\u2019s a song in your head sometimes, and you recall a snippet of the melody or a lyric, but you can\u2019t figure it out? You know how sometimes that lasts for 25 years, and then you post it on a Facebook alternative music group board, and someone gives you the answer you\u2019ve been searching for within two hours?<\/p>\n
No? Just me?<\/p>\n
Well, that band was the awesomely-named Devils Wielding Scimitars, the album was their second release Worry Dolls<\/i>, and the song in question was \u201cDayglo.\u201d DWS is fairly obscure, coming to fruition in the beginning of the \u201990s when female-fronted alt-rock was huge, and unfortunately they did little to distinguish themselves from the pack. It\u2019s part of the jangly soup that includes 10,000 Maniacs, Tori Amos, Juliana Hatfield, the Sundays and Exene Cervenka (during her brief post-X solo period). After this album, the band didn\u2019t record for another seven years before putting out one final release and then calling it quits.<\/p>\n
Worry Dolls <\/i>gained a small amount of traction on college rock radio, with \u201cDayglo\u201d and \u201cTwirl Around the World\u201d getting airplay. I\u2019m not sure about any others on the album, but they sure as hell deserved the attention, because this is a solid album. It\u2019s an alt-power pop-rock gem, cruising by at 10 songs and 35 minutes, and there is definitely shared DNA with the artists mentioned above as well as a hefty dose of R.E.M. <\/p>\n
Jangle guitar was of course a big thing once Peter Buck brought it back to the mainstream, but in Devils guitarist Scott Tyburski\u2019s hands, it was wielded nicely, with \u201cBlue Star Linoleum\u201d being the most outstanding example. It\u2019s prime alternative with a long guitar solo and it\u2019s a pity that more people never heard it. \u201cTwirl Around The World\u201d is naggingly catchy, with Suzy Callahan\u2019s clarion vocals sounding friendly and youthful, a far cry from the ironic detachment and angst that would quickly characterize alt-rock. <\/p>\n
Released on vinyl initially, the second side of this album starts with the solid \u201cDayglo,\u201d and there\u2019s really no reason why the song should work so well\u2014the chiming guitars, the little jam session after each chorus\u2014but it sticks. \u201cFire Drill\u201d trades off slow verses and hyper-strummed folk guitar; it\u2019s not the first time you detect a Who influence in the songwriting. Brandon Finley\u2019s drumming is also a standout here.<\/p>\n
Callahan\u2019s vocals are on point throughout; it\u2019s a pity she never got a bigger audience during this time, because she could have held her own with Merchant, Amos, DiFranco, you name it. Even on the less-catchy songs (\u201cFeed The Shark,\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s A Hemingway,\u201d \u201cChapter\u2019s End,\u201d) she sings her heart out. The penultimate track, \u201cTrain A Calling,\u201d shakes things up with a bluesy beat, some slap bass from Michael Baker and some grungy chords (remember, in 1990, this sound had not fully hit the mainstream yet, and it suggests a different direction the quartet could have taken). Tyburski then takes a long guitar journey for the back half of the song. It\u2019s nothing like the rest of the album, but it fits in perfectly and probably sounded fantastic live.<\/p>\n
The disc can be hard to find, but Spotify has it and it\u2019s worth a spin. After 1997\u2019s III<\/i>, the members went their separate ways, and aside from some random studio work, it would seem they all got out of the music business altogether. To me, that makes DWS one of alt-rock\u2019s good \u201cwhat if\u201d stories, because based on the flawed gem that is Worry Dolls<\/i>, they deserved to be heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10823],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46557","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-devils-wielding-scimitars","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46557"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}