Kristin Gundred, who goes by the moniker Dee Dee and began Dum Dum Girls as a solo project before adding bandmates, serves up a slightly softer version of the concise, lo-fi throwback bliss that the White Stripes perfected with “Fell in Love With a Girl” in 2002. These days, the formula isn’t especially novel or difficult to master, but I Will Be hits the “fuzzy California garage rock with sugary female vocals” nail dead-on and drives it home in less than a half-hour that’s broken up into tight little two- and three-minute tracks.
Produced by Richard Gottehrer, who helped pen the original version of “I Want Candy,” this debut full-length is a summer-camp soundtrack, filled with uncomplicated surf-rock instrumentation and detached allusions to high school, first kisses, and youthful envy. The only disappointing moments are the few during which the Girls ooze out of their cookie cutter — as when Gundred croons a cornball duet with her husband on “Blank Girl.”
Mostly, though, I Will Be is a flawlessly light album that floats to the top of a lo-fi pond overcrowded with sinking debris.
