More Sugar, Less Wisdom

When it comes to band age, BLUFFING are a little baby. The Brooklyn band have been around for two years tops, and are just now getting around to releasing their debut album Sugar Coated Pills Of Wisdom on their even younger record label PaperCup Music, also based in Brooklyn, which was founded just last year.

They may not have a real website (does bandcamp count?) and even I have more Twitter followers than they do, but the duo of Olivia Drusin and J Boxer, along with drummer Sammy Weissberg and alternating bass players Charlie DY and Madeline Black, have managed to gain attention with their fast-paced indie/punk tunes. The two share the vocal spotlight pretty evenly and Drusin has a sound like Agent M from Tsunami Bomb, although she’s not nearly as tough and menacing (think more in terms of Tsunami Bomb songs like “The Simple Truth”), particularly in parts of “I’ll Go To Sleep” when her voice reaches a high pitch.

But her voice lowers significantly in pitch in the follow-up track “Tonka Toy,” a song that happily repeats the title phrase. “Circles” may be the oddest song on the album, sounding like it was recorded a decade ago, with Boxer repeating, “Always running round in circles / Never gonna stop for air / Never gonna go nowhere,” in a creepy voice. Thankfully Drusin steps in to take the reigns before things get too creepy.

“Sheltered” stands out, being that it’s the only lo-fi track on the album and the pace slows down. It easily could have been the closing credits song to an early 2000s college humor movie.

Lyrically, there’s nothing ground-breaking going on, but it’s all bouncy, feel-good kind of stuff like “Salad,” the love song: “Make me a salad of all your favorite vegetables around / I’ll make you dinner so you know that my love is true.”

It’s understandable that BLUFFING are gaining traction. There’s no way someone would be able to ignore this band at a show. They’re too fast and there isn’t even one second of silence anywhere on Sugar Coated Pills Of Wisdom. But if you hate it, it’s okay: none of the ten songs last more than two minutes.