MadLove – White With Foam

Next up from the Mr. Bungle clan is bassist Trevor Dunn. Although Dunn is probably most well known in his post-Bungle days for his role in Fantomas, he has become pretty much a hired hand performing with everyone from Sean Lennon to the Melvins to former Korn member Brian "Head" Welch (an album which Dunn says, despite being on it, he has never heard). His latest project is rock group MadLove.

(Ipecac Recordings, 2009)

Punchy and bass/guitar-centric, MadLove combines driving bass with classical instruments less associated with rock to produce heavy melodramatic arrangements.

White With Foam is all Dunn’s work, and his attempt at writing rock music. While the album is much more standard in terms of song structure to other projects Dunn has been involved in, there’s a bit too much variation and subtle nuances for it to become all that popular. This is a good thing because the subtle use of more traditional instruments is what sets Dunn apart from his more popular counterparts.

Korean songstress Sunny Kim handles most of the vocals; her distinctive vocals, at times, have a very vulnerable feel to them. The combination of Kim’s vocals and the use of vibraphone, harp, cello, violin, and viola produce a classical effect and another reason why it is unlikely to hit the “mainstream”.

Kim sounds more assure of herself on Absence & Noise, the strong vocals and heavy bass giving it real guts. A few songs do lack guts but for the most part Dunn’s focus on bass and Icelandic guitarist, Hilmar Jensson’s power chords keep this firmly somewhere in the rock category. Simple, punchy riffs give songs like As Sad as it Was Beautiful a foot-stomping like quality.

Dirty is very… well, dirty - gritty may be a better word; the bass being very prominent, even more so than the rest of the album. Left With Nothing sees Dunn take a turn on vocals and, in my opinion, it’s probably the standout track on the album. His vocals are a little more soothing and give a somewhat trippy effect; certainly an entirely different mood is conveyed. It would be interesting to hear the whole album sung with a different vocalist.