Thursday, February 10, 2011

Band Of The Week: One-Eyed Doll

Having recently rediscovered the awesomeness of bandcamp.com, I made the mistake of having a random hop through their catalogues. I came across a band by the name of One-Eyed Doll, thought their album art looked interesting so had a listen. I fell in love within two tracks. So, despite telling myself I wouldn't buy any more music for a while (not counting MATM's EP, because I've been looking forward to that for ages), I went ahead and bought 3 albums of scrummy One-Eyed Doll material.

One-Eyed Doll are kinda hard to define. They're female-fronted, that's obvious - vocalist Kimberly Freeman has a brilliant, distinctive voice that puts me in mind somewhat of Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs. Style-wise though, there's hard rock, punk and some sort of metal. I mean, some tracks show a very definite thrash metal influence. Not actually thrash metal themselves, but there's that feel there. There's also quite a strong grunge feeling on some tracks. Right old mash of influences, which is wonderful.

It was Freeman's voice that really drew me in - deceptively sweet and yet sometimes so harsh (which is probably what reminded me of Romily Alice). But what caught my attention was the track Be My Friend on the album Monster. It actually made me laugh out loud, which isn't that common a reaction from me with regards to music. It's such a sweet, funny and yet sinister song. It's that that made me fall in love. I didn't need to listen to the rest of the album - I downloaded it there and then, checked out a few of the tracks on their other albums and promptly downloaded Break and Hole as well. Then I discovered this little wonder.




How can you not enjoy that? There's that same fun take on things as there is in Be My Friend. So of course I had to download the You're A Vampire single too. Ahh, new music overdose.

What's wonderful is that on the band's bandcamp, you can pay whatever you want for their albums, including nothing. However tempting it may be to download it for free, I strongly suggest paying for their music - it's well worth the money, and they're the sort of band that actually need your cash.

Damnit, I wish I could see these guys live, but I doubt they'll be coming over to Australia any time soon. I will make do with their awesome albums and the "rockumentary" I found on YouTube. An hour and a half of awesomeness, including bits of live shows. Which look like total epic awesome. When I finally get my arse over to the States, I am totally hunting down at least one One-Eyed Doll show.

So, check 'em out, let me know what you think and pass it on.

Assorted One-Eyed Doll links:
Official site
Myspace
YouTube
Facebook
Last.FM
Bandcamp

Recommended tracks:
From Hole: Scapegoat, Hoochie Mama, Hole, Recipe 4 Success, Wheels On The Bus
From Monster: Be My Friend, Brief Candle, UFO, PAO!, Monster
From Break: Airplane Man, See Jane Run, Cinderblock, New Orleans, Resurrection
You're A Vampire/Battle On! (single/b-side)

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