Dreamcar - Dreamcar

Pitchfork 58

Most supergroups are predicated on a paradox: old masters trumpeting a sonic restart with the knowledge that, at least musically speaking, shedding the baggage of the past is but a pipe dream. A supergroup’s members can pray for rebirth all they like, but nostalgia inevitably creeps in. Dreamcar, a new band comprising AFI frontman Davey Havok and everyone in No Doubt not named Gwen Stefani (guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal, drummer Adrian Young), don’t fall into that trap. On their eponymous debut, the quartet takes an alternate route down memory lane.

Speaking with Billboard earlier this year, Havok framed the album as an adolescent time capsule of sorts, one that “immediately... evoked moments of [his] musical upbringing.” “That new romantic period was something I was very enamored of when I was very young,” Havok said. The latter portions of AFI and No Doubt’s discographies could be seen as a testament to Dreamcar’s new wave crushes (as could Havok’s synth side project Blaqk Audio). The former band went full-on Cure over a decade ago with their breakthrough album Decemberunderground; the latter group’s long-awaited return, 2012’s Push and Shove, often resembled a Duran Duran covers album, with Stefani filling in for Simon Le Bon.

Dreamcar, then, represents the inevitable offspring of this love affair—a spitting image of its parents’ influences, as opposed to the parents themselves. In other words, what we have here is neither Tragic Kingdom slicked with eyeliner, nor Sing the Sorrow spruced up with ska, but a bunch of erstwhile punks nodding to the greats like bobbleheads, while Havok wails his heart out. Following an eternity of plucking off paint-by-numbers pop-rock basslines, Kanal is back on the offensive, channeling Peter Hook through textured, punchy progressions on “Kill For Candy” and “All of the Dead Girls.” Dumont’s antsy riffs—which typically flit around the mix just out of reach, flickering like dying neon—are the clear product of years of Andy Taylor worship. They’re anchored by Young’s disciplined work behind the kit, a far cry from his No Doubt days, which showcased a more pugnacious spirit.

Were it not for this fortified mid-tempo framework, Havok’s incessant whinging on Dreamcar (directed at exes, paramours, and other cheery folk) may very well have torpedoed the quartet’s maiden voyage. That alt-rock’s designated theatre kid would take an even more zealous approach to new romantic songcraft on a new-wave-revival exercise comes as no surprise, of course. And Havok’s brooding occasionally blossoms spectacularly, like on “Born To Lie”, an open-eyed kiss-off with harmonies that arch and intersect unexpectedly.

All too often, though, he simpers like he’s trying to open his heart and study SAT vocabulary at the same time. “Did you see that candy girl selling pretty dreams?” he ponders midway though “On the Charts,” “A rainbow smile to tame the storm/In haute couture pristine?” Even the songs that take a more comedic approach—such as “All of the Dead Girls,” a vaudevillian ode to goths, and maybe necrophilia—threaten to collapse under the weight of lines like “Whatever their tone, beyond moribund/Bathing in bleach and Rose 31.” And yet, ironically, the lyrical setbacks also help emphasize Dreamcar’s greatest strength: It’s a simple labor of love, as opposed to a grandiose spectacle, and in doing so, it sidesteps the usual supergroup cesspool.