Madlove — White With Foam
Joining Dunn in Madlove we have female rock indie singer Sunny Kim(also in Brooklyn based 80’s tinged synth/ rock project Monocle) who has a powerful & harmonic voice that at times has some Mike Patton like tones(whether this is Dunn’s songwriting or Kim subconcise efforts to mimic Patton vocals is unclear). We also have Hilmar Jensson on guitar (who’s in Icelandic glitch bound electroncia pop band Kira Kira) & lastly we have Ches Smith on Drums & Vibraphone- Smith has been a long term collaborator with Dunn appearing in Secret Chiefs 3 line up as well as many other Dunn related projects, he also plays drums in edgy & darkly romantic 80’s sounding pop project Xiu Xiu.
The albums pace is quite varied from song to song going from rocked up, to edgy vibe led tracks , onto synth stab post-punk; though it's firmly set in the experimental pop rock bracket & never really goes multi genre mixing like some of Dunn’s other project. Yet there are still elements here you would'nt normal find in a 'pop rock' band like odd time signatures & sudden off-kilter edger’s like: the slight unhinged & surprising vibe runs that litter the songs, dark slight discordant piano & synth cinematics, and all manner of tiny sonic quirks which makes this more replayble & rewarding than your common garden harmonic, but edgy indie rock female fronted band.
Madlove is another interesting sonic turn from Dunn & with ‘White with Foam’ he’s managed to make a edgy, slick pop rock record with twisted, surprising & often sour edger’s. On the downside it does sound mostly like another side project & not a band yet; sure you hear hints of the other members sonic identities ever so often between the Dunn-istic pop rock rolls & bends. But there’s not enough of them yet to make a true impact & make this a Madlove band album instead of just another Dunn project.