Dream Wife @ DC9 - 9/27/2018
Dream Wife at DC9 (Photo by Mauricio Castro / @themauricio)
“I am not my body, I am somebody.” This line from Dream Wife’s “Somebody” was the rallying cry at DC9 on Thursday night, and really, across the country after the contentious and momentous Kavanaugh-Ford Senate hearings that day. The trio of Rakel Mjöll on vocals, Alice Go on guitar, and Bella Popadec on bass met in law school in Brighton, England, and draws inspirations ranging from Sleater-Kinney to the Spice Girls. From the way they convey themselves on stage with a heightened level of confidence and defiance, it’s not hard to draw comparisons to either. In-between her talk-singing verses on “Taste” (which they debuted live for the first time), “Kids” and many others, Mjöll looked into the crowd in a “Yes, in fact, I *am* the shit” kind of way. (She’s not wrong, though.) And after a tough day to watch on the news, Dream Wife delivered the cathartic release that many people were in desperate need of.
Dream Wife’s self-titled debut album is out now through Lucky Number Music.
Opening for Dream Wife was NYC-based trio New Myths, who performed songs from their as-of-yet untitled follow-up to their 2014 debut Give Me Noise (available through Taming Ghosts), and LA’s Russo, who powered through numerous sound issues at DC9 to deliver a dominant performance, at times even screaming into the crowd when the microphone failed. Their debut EP A House with a Pool is out now through Botticelli Music.
