Editor’s Note: Our new, recurring “Albumism Recommends” series aims to shine a bright light on our favorite albums of the past, with an emphasis on the records that arguably never achieved the widespread or sustained attention they rightfully deserve. As you’ll see below, unlike our longer-form feature articles, we’ve intentionally kept the accompanying commentary to a minimum, so as to allow the great music to speak for itself.
We hope that you enjoy discovering (or rediscovering) these musical treasures and if you like what you hear, we encourage you to spread the good word far and wide so that others can experience these under-the-radar classics as well.
ARTIST: Nicole Dollanganger
TITLE: Ode to Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs
RELEASED: February 20, 2013
LABEL: Self-released
NOTABLE TRACKS: “My Pug” | “True Love Café” | “Ugly”
Dawn Wiener, the star of Todd Solondz’s 1995 cult classic Welcome to the Dollhouse, practically invented cringe. And yet wrapped up in all the flinching embarrassment was also sweetness and sass and an unshakable dignity. Canadian songstress Nicole Dollanganger conjures a comparable heady, disparate mixture of wincing overshare, heart-panging sweetness, and brazen sexual overture on her 2013 album Ode to Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs, capturing all the best and complex at the heart of both the movie and the character.
Ode to Dawn Wiener is the third of four albums Dollanganger (born Nicole Bell) recorded entirely on GarageBand in her bedroom in her hometown of Stouffville, Ontario, and then published to her Tumblr and Bandcamp. Then, in 2015, her music captured the attention of fellow Canadian Grimes, who was so struck by Dollanganger’s talent that she created an entire label, Eerie Organization, with the sole purpose of putting out Dollanganger’s music. A combination of ultra-feminine vocals over spare, folky guitar, Dollanganger’s songs have a lullaby quality to them that, when mixed with her go-to themes of horror, true crime, decaying Americana, and complicated love, are thought-provoking, haunting, and, yes, somewhat eerie.
Ode to Dawn Weiner is likely Dollanganger’s most commercially viable album, for it deals solely with the beauty of love in blossom and bloom, though it includes just enough lyrical grit and surprise to keep even her biggest fans on their toes. The album’s first song, “True Love Café,” opens with the line, “You have such a beautiful face / I’ve been dreaming about it between my legs,” as Dollanganger switches back and forth between two new lovers eating ice cream sundaes in a quaint café and a hot, steamy bedroom sex scene. And yet Dollanganger’s sweet, deeply heartfelt vocals keep it from ever coming across as vulgar.
“Ugly” encourages a lover who’s been bullied for their looks (in the tradition of Welcome to the Dollhouse) to see how beautiful he or she truly is. “Please Eat” continues this theme later on the album (Dollanganger has openly struggled with disordered eating). And “My Pug” is the sweetest, kindest, most gorgeous song ever written in ode to a pet (in this case, Dollanganger’s own little pug, Fred)—“A gentleman you are, you always take me on long walks.” Every song is a little bit (or very) embarrassing, but also oh so sweet and deliciously unabashed.
BUY Ode to Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs via Bandcamp
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