On its Tapetown Sessions recording of “Content Jungle,” Vancouver, BC-based band Dumb sounds like the missing link between Sonic Youth, Parquet Courts and the Reatards. Its brash guitar riffs indulge beautifully odd bends and fragmented melodies. The shout along vocals do little to undermine the clever lyrics that cite dated cultural references that take us out of the current era (Kool Aid and cathode rays?) while injecting more contemporary cultural artifacts like Netflix to comment on the way so much of our documented history has been plumbed and gives people the impression that it’s all accessible and understood sans proper context simply because you can pick and choose and find anything on the internet for which the title of the song, “Content Jungle,” could be another name. The lyrics neither condemn nor glorify this feature of the world now but does highlight the absurdity of thinking mediated access to culture and the world is the same thing as direct experience.
Queen City Sounds and Art 