Dressy Bessy

Back cover of Dressy Bessy’s 2002 album ‘Sound Go Round’ – photo Stephano Giovanni – Darren Albert (drums), Rob Greene (bass), John Hill (guitar), Tammy Ealom (vocals, guitar)

Dressy Bessy playlist

Contributor: Marc Fagel

Indie pop band Dressy Bessy, fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Tammy Ealom, are fearless purveyors of unabashed bubblegum music, more indebted to the golden age of the Archies and the Monkees than to the more sophisticated pop of their post-punk peers. The Denver, Colorado act formed in the mid-90s as a peripheral part of the Elephant 6 indie music scene (guitarist John Hill serves double-duty in E6 mainstay Apples in Stereo), sharing those bands’ affection for retro, 60s-infused pop music with an indie edge and casual, lo-fi sonic aesthetics. Over the course of some half-dozen-plus LPs (their most recent coming in 2019), they moved towards a more muscular, harder-rocking sound, while retaining their three-chord pop roots and Ealom’s charming girl-next-door vocals and earnest affection for the young women who populate her songs.

After a few independent singles in 1997 and 1998, they released their first full-length, Pink Hearts Yellow Moons, in 1999. Its scant 30 minutes are loaded with winning bubblegum nuggets, stripped-down and effervescent. Not a bum track in the batch, but standouts like Jenny Come On and If You Should Try To Kiss Her amply display Ealom’s girlish charm and the band’s perky enthusiasm.

A few like-minded, arguably even better singles followed (collected, along with the initial pre-LP singles, on 2003’s Little Music compilation). Lipstick is about as pure-bubblegum as they come, a lengthy Casio-keyboard intro segueing into a three-chord rocker and an infectious vocal round. (They remade the song a decade later, losing that cheesy keyboard intro and giving it a little more electric guitar punch.) Live To Tell All is equally playful, Eamon offering a delightful call-and-response with herself.

For their full-length follow-up, 2002’s Sound Go Round, the band opted not to mess with a winning formula. I Saw Cinnamon shows how their simple bubblegum could sound with maybe a few more hours of studio time, amiable and smile-inducing with a touch of guitar punch.

A self-titled third album typically indicates a band signaling an artistic re-start, but 2003’s Dressy Bessy feels more like the culmination of their early years—the songs retain their playful, light-hearted pop vibe, but with fully-realized production that finally makes them radio-ready. Not like they ever got any detectible radio airplay, but by this point, freed of the lo-fi sonic limitations, the absence of greater success was entirely inexplicable. Album-opener Just Once More is eminently lovable, the unleashed bubblegum of the debut repackaged as rousing power pop (which at least found its way onto late-night MTV). But the real stand-out is This May Hurt (A Little), the tale of a female friendship fallen by the wayside, Eaton conveying sentiments rarely heard in male-dominated rock & roll, as poignant as any break-up song—all set to an insistent three-chord rocker that digs its claws in.

2005’s Electrified felt like a continuation of its eponymous predecessor, chunky power-pop given an increasingly… well, electrified sound, the band coming across more as beefed-up alt.rockers, albeit still emphasizing their bubblegum roots. Small, in particular, highlighted that dichotomy, with rump-shaking glam guitars bumping up against a cute keyboard hook, Ealom walking the line between sweet and aggressive.

Alas, the records that followed started to see some diminishing returns, as the band pivoted away from the simple charms of their earlier pop songs into more dense, at times even abrasive, electricity. Still, plenty of sing-along nuggets are scattered across these releases. Sindy Says, the album-closer from 2008’s Holler & Stomp, mines similar territory from past glories but with great spirit. And Lady Liberty, from 2016’s Kingsized, shows the band 20 years into their career seemingly untouched by age, energetic and still in love with simple pop songs blazed by distortion.

They switched things up quite a bit on 2019’s Fast Faster Disaster, an eclectic post-punk record that found them sounding more like latter-day Sleater-Kinney, the old pop songs stretching out into rock, dance, and even electronica—not everything works, but it showed them willing to push themselves. Sadly, they’ve been relatively quiet since then, though hopefully the 2021 stand-alone single I’m Still Here, a throwback jangly pop song, is an indicator that they’re not quite ready to hang it up.

Dressy Bessy official website

Dressy Bessy wikipedia

Dressy Bessy bandcamp

2019 Tammy Ealom interview at All or Nothing Magazine

Dressy Bessy biography (AllMusic)

Marc Fagel is a semi-retired securities lawyer living outside San Francisco with his wife and his obscenely oversized music collection. He is the author of the rock lover’s memoir “Jittery White Guy Music”. His daily ruminations on random albums in his collection can be seen on his blog of the same name, or by following him on twitter.

Marc’s previous posts include Mary Lou Lord, Amy Rigby, Young Fresh Fellows, Josh Ritter, The Hold Steady, Game Theory, The Reivers, The Shazam, Guided by Voices, The Connells, Big Audio Dynamite, Sleater-Kinney, Liz Phair, Elephant 6, Apples in Stereo, Sweet, The Bats, Matthew Sweet, Badfinger, New Pornographers, Bettie Serveert, Flaming Lips, Neil Young, My Morning Jacket, Raveonettes, Phish, Luna, Jesus and Mary Chain, Feelies, Genesis, Wilco, King Crimson, Brian Eno

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