Sub Pop
2007
Dumb Luck
About This Album
It certainly wasn't a fluke that the Postal Service's Give Up became so popular -- the sleek sounds and vulnerable melodies Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard fused together were a perfect combination for early-2000s indie. For a time, it seemed like the Postal Service might overshadow Tamborello's more venerable experimental project, Dntel, so it's nice to see that he returned to it with Dumb Luck, which arrived six years after the brilliant Life Is Full of Possibilities. It's even nicer to discover that Dntel still has an identity distinct from the Postal Service: Dumb Luck is another lovely, impressionistic collage of dream pop, indie rock, and electronic sounds, graced with vocals by some of indie's most distinctive singers. A little of the Postal Service's immediacy has rubbed off on Dumb Luck's songwriting, but Dntel's sound remains much more abstract, with squiggles, splashes, and scratches of sound popping up everywhere; the electro-calypso of "The Distance" feels like it's melting, bending, and breaking right before your ears. Dumb Luck's whimsical arrangements and production tricks are a lot more involved and ornate than Life Is Full of Possibilities' sound was, but these flights of fancy and intentional imperfections are just as much a part of the songwriting as the lyrics and melodies are.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,5,6 and 8)

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