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Night Dolls with Hairspray

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Night Dolls with Hairspray
A woman's hand with pink fingernails holds a black television remote in front of duplicates of electric guitars and a picture of James Ferraro with sunglasses and lipstick. On the far right is a woman's hair.
Studio album by
ReleasedOctober 31, 2010
Genre
Length48:15
LabelOlde English Spelling Bee
ProducerJames Ferraro
James Ferraro chronology
On Air
(2009)
Night Dolls with Hairspray
(2010)
Far Side Virtual
(2011)

Night Dolls with Hairspray is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro,[4] released on October 31, 2010 by Olde English Spelling Bee. Described as a "cycle of bubblegum pop songs,"[3] its lo-fi sound draws on sources such as 1980s pop culture tropes, B-movies, and glam punk. The album garnered generally favorable reviews from critics, and was called a "weirdo masterpiece of the 21st century" by Impose.

Composition

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In an interview, Ferraro claimed he had gotten into "weird street fashion" while recording Night Dolls with Hairspray, which led to the album being influenced by glam rock and power pop styles.[5] Of the record's concept, Ferraro explained: "the idea itself was basically just private material, just fooling around. I was really inspired to try to make just weird B-movie style trash."[4] Many of the songs on Night Dolls with Hairspray feature Ferraro exaggeratedly singing in falsetto, which he claimed was "silly" and "harmless" and made the album sound "cool" and "futuristic".[2]

Pitchfork described the album's overall instrumentation as consisting of "plunging bass lines, warped guitar riffs, and crooning vocals" that "bounce around the stereo space like lasers in a hall of mirrors."[6] A reviewer for Playground magazine described the tracks as "fragmentary songs," in that it feels like each track cuts to different songs; this "collage effect" is an essential part of hypnagogic pop, in that the variety of 1980s musical styles serve as an "exercise in nostalgia".[3]

According to Nick Richardson of Fact magazine, Night Dolls with Hairspray explores the surfaces of popular media in the 1980s;[7] in doing so, Ferraro creates new bad behaviors for scenarios common in B movies of that decade.[7] The song "Leather High School" takes place in a 1980s high school movie situation, but adds a sexual context not normally present in such a movie: "The principal's wearing panties under his suit / They're taking him down to the boiler room / They're going to whip him till he bleeds."[7] "Buffy Honkerburg's Answering Machine" involves the singer as a stalker nerd sending lewd messages to a cheerleader in a slasher film scenario.[7]

Richardson noted that Night Dolls with Hairspray "reflects a fantastical vision of the present that's out of date and crumbling as soon as it's realised – even as the vision hairpins to a blemishless space of muscled, digital geometry."[7] The album features interludes that Richardson described as "disorienting amalgams of gross-out sound effects, shortwave radio noise, advertising jingles and cartoon theme tunes," which all represent the negative by-products of the entertainment community the album mocks.[7] Night Dolls with Hairspray also focuses on how most people positively view an otherwise bad entertainment industry today, where "real teenagers, like Ferraro records, are smelly, acnefied, confused; while Beyonce [sic] is a slick, inhuman cyborg".[7]

Critical reception

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Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Fact4/5[7]
Pitchfork7.9/10[6]
Playground7.9/10[3]

An Impose magazine journalist called Night Dolls with Hairspray a "weirdo masterpiece of the 21st century."[8] Marc Masters of Pitchfork described it as "remarkably catchy music," writing that fans of artists like Ariel Pink would enjoy the album; he also called it "dizzying" and "nauseating, much the way audiences left The Blair Witch Project more sick from the shaky camerawork than scared by the plot."[6] The Pitchfork blog Altered Zones called Night Dolls with Hairspray a "supremely listenable batch of hits" and "so poignant that it'll leave you wondering how you (actually) chuckled at the roach-infested creeps that populated the album."[3] In a harsher review, Joshua Paul Greene of MVRemix called the album "a painfully lo-fi, endlessly frenetic example of what I consider to be seriously unfulfilled potential."[9] He mainly criticized the editing, more specifically the placement of sounds that ruin the flow of each song that otherwise has "catchy melodies and rhythms",[9] and also chastised most of its songs for ending abruptly.[9]

Track listing

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Night Dolls with Hairspray[10]
No.TitleLength
1."Dollhouse Frotteur"5:10
2."Runaway"6:32
3."Brittney's Gum"3:01
4."Leather High School"5:41
5."Buffy Honkerburg's Answering Machine"3:36
6."Lipstick On Ants"1:51
7."Killer Nerd"5:08
8."Roaches Watch TV"1:29
9."Roses And Mystery"4:31
10."Movie Monster"4:47
11."Radio Cherubs"6:29
Total length:48:15

Release history

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Region Date Format(s) Label
Worldwide[10] October 31, 2010 Digital download Olde English Spelling Bee

References

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  1. ^ MacFarlane, Richard (January 19, 2011). "Zoned In: James Ferraro: Night Dolls With Hairspray". Archived from the original on March 17, 2011. Altered Zones. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  2. ^ a b "James Ferraro interview: "The city of dream.". Dummy. February 8, 2011. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e Conte, Iván (January 19, 2011). "Night Dolls With Hairspray". Playground. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  4. ^ a b "Interview: James Ferraro And His Music Multiverse". Red Bull Music Academy. March 6, 2012. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  5. ^ Cornwell, Samantha (January 3, 2011). "Artist Profile: James Ferraro". Archived from the original on January 11, 2011. Altered Zones. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  6. ^ a b c Masters, Marc (July 18, 2011). "James Ferraro: Nightdolls with Hairspray / On Air". Pitchfork. Conde Nast. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Richardson, Nick (January 5, 2011). "James Ferraro: Night Dolls with Hairspray". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  8. ^ Krinsley, Jeremy (February 9, 2011). "New James Ferraro, "Tabloid 2". Impose. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  9. ^ a b c Paul Greene, Joshua (July 28, 2011). "James Ferraro – Night Dolls With Hairspray". MVRemix. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  10. ^ a b "Night Dolls With Hairspray". Olde English Spelling Bee Bandcamp. Retrieved January 15, 2017.