D is for Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever are one of those bands I was fascinated by long before I actually heard anything by them. You may recall that I developed an interest in the music of Cambodia from before the rule of the Khmer Rouge, largely through one article I read in a magazine somewhere and then a Sublime Frequencies record called Cambodian Cassette Archives. It was then fascinating to learn that there was this band Dengue Fever out there who were playing this music again and I yearned to see them live and hear their records. And eventually I did.

The story of Dengue Fever is that they were formed originally by two brothers, Ethan and Zac Holtzman, who had become fascinated by Khmer Pop. In LA's Little Phnom Penh they found Chhom Nimol, an amazingly voiced star of the local karaoke scene, and so they recruited her and a load of other talented musicians into the band.

Their first album sees Ms Nimol singing covers of Cambodian classics largely unheard of in the west at the time - tunes originally sung by the likes of Ros Sereysothea or Pan Ron. On one or two tracks Ethan Holtzman lends his voice to a song by Sinn Sisamouth, the male legend of Khmer Pop. The vocals are all in Cambodian (or Khmer, or whatever language they speak out there), though the song titles are translated. The musical accompaniment is a bit more surfed up than the vintage recordings would have been (though not as much as you might think - the 1970s singers would often have been accompanied by local beat groups).

There are a couple of stone-cold classics on this. 'I'm Sixteen' is a floor-filler with a degree of call response between Nimol's lead vocals and Ethan Holtzman's backing. 'Shave Your Beard' has me wondering if the lyrics may be new, as the title would seem to reference Ethan Holtzman's amazing facial hair, but it is a slower and more contemplative tune than the floor fillers seen elsewhere. There are many other great tracks here, but the real winner for me is 'New Year's Eve', which starts slow and then turns into an irresistible explosion of frenetic energy. When I saw them live in London they saved this one till very late in their set, and the place erupted when the switch happens. To hear it is to love it.


There is also, for no obvious reason, a track called 'Ethanopium' that is basically an instrumental cover of 'Yègellé Tezeta' by Mulatu Astatqé. I guess the Holtzman's world music interests must run widely.

Links:

My review of the Cambodian Cassette Archives record

album cover image source

An inuit panda production

MELTDOWN MAN – Part 2: March of the Superyujees

This is my account of the one concert in this year's Meltdown festival I made it to. Read part one here, if you want to.

And then Dengue Fever. I was talking about them to the people from work, mentioning that they formed to cover Cambodian pop music from the late 1960s and early 1970s, going on to write their own tunes in a similar style. That sounds amazingly niche, the kind of music that only some kind of world music ponce would listen to, but that reckons without three important factors. Firstly, the pop music of Cambodia is just amazing, a kind of pop-psych sound that simply cries out for a wider audience; any band playing half-decent versions of this music would be worth a listen. Secondly, Dengue Fever are a most exquisite live band – in fact, they have a tightness and presence that make me think of them as one of the most impressive live bands of our times. And thirdly, their tiny singer Chhom Nimol is blessed with the most astonishing set of lungs and vocal chords; she is the archetypal little woman with the big voice, managing to sing beautifully as well as loudly and project an aura of star quality. She would be the secret weapon in any band, and it is great that she is able to bring the great songs of past Cambodian singers to a contemporary audience.

The band fully lived up to the picture I have painted for them above, wowing the audience with their stage presence, tight playing, and Chhom Nimol's unbounded charisma and ability. They look great on stage, with Chhom's lovely gown contrasting nicely with Zac Holtzman's amazing beard, and her small size off-set by the astonishing height of bassist Senon Gaius Williams.

But there is always a spectre hanging over this music, for all its joyfulness. That spectre is of course the Khmer Rouge regime, which shut down Cambodia's pop music scene and killed off almost everyone involved in it as part of a general extermination of their various enemies. While listening to the infectious rhythms of 'New Year's Eve', I was briefly overcome with emotion as I reflected in particular on the sad and brutal death of the gentle-faced singer Sinn Sisamouth – killed with sharpened sticks after a long period of incarceration and torture.

That said, Dengue Fever's music is so uplifting that it is impossible to maintain a sad mood for long. The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a seated venue, but the band soon had people dancing in the aisles and rushing to the front of the auditorium. I don't think anyone could have left this concert without a happy smile on their face. If I had a single quibble, it would be that maybe Chhom Nimol's vocals were at times a bit over-amplified – on duets like 'Tiger Phone Card' or 'Sober Driver' she did rather drown out Zac Holtzman's admittedly less strong voice. But that was just a minor annoyance, one that did not cause a bother on the great many tracks that she sings alone.

I did not recognise a great many of the songs the band played – I am guessing these were tunes from the new album, Cannibal Courtship. These sounded pretty good in the live context, even 'Cement Slippers', which under-impressed me when I first heard it. The songs I knew included some from the earlier records where they sing in Khmer and some from the likes of Venus On Earth, where there are English-language vocals, including the sublime love song 'Tiger Phone Card'.

I hope sometime to get round to buying the new album; I could have done after the show, but there was a bit of a queue for the merchandise, and we were already out past my bedtime.

image source

An inuit panda production

Getting The Fever

I have finally seen Dengue Fever and they did not disappoint. Before talking about the band themselves, let me briefly mention the support act. They were a local act called The Hired Hands. I had not seen them before, but they were pretty entertaining. They had a slightly folky edge to them, or else a hint of early Belle & Sebastian (but not in a derivative way). In fact, they were like Los Campesinos would be if they did not suck. I hope to see them again in the future.

And so to Dengue Fever themselves. In general terms you probably get the idea with these fellows now. They were formed originally by two brothers who became fascinated by the Khmer Pop sounds of pre-1975 Cambodia. These fellows managed to recruit other musicians and, crucially, a Cambodian singer already well known on the Cambodian karaoke circuit. With her at the helm they started to play live and release records, originally doing mainly covers but increasingly moving towards doing their own tunes. In broad terms, the music has a surfy/psychey quality, while the vocals are often astronomically high yet boasting the semi-guttural cadences of the Khmer language.

Live, a couple of things strike about Dengue Fever. First off, they are an incredibly tight outfit. I had the idea that they would come across like the brothers and a load of pretty boy session players, but no. These seem to be a bunch of fellows who really love playing together and are really good at it. Excellent. There was a wonderful fluidity to how they moved around on stage. The other funny thing about them is that the fellow with the funny beard (the one of the brothers who sings the male parts on record) is incredibly tall. This makes for some bizarre stage interaction between him and the singer, who (like many Cambodians) is a bit short. The third thing that strikes about the band is that the singer is amazing – she is a total star, in fact, and I felt privileged to be seeing someone as incredible in a venue as small as the Sugar Club.

They played some songs from their recent Venus on Earth album, as well as others I did not recognise, presumably from their earlier works. I got the impression that most people present were not too familiar with their stuff on record (apart from the real fans), so you did get things like the band saying "The next song is called 'Shave Your Beard'" and getting no more reaction than usual. But people were present to have fun and enjoy good music, so no one was letting lack of familiarity stop them.

There is something wonderful about a band who really know how to play fronted by a total star and playing infectiously catchy tunes that make it impossible for you to sit still. I recommend catching Dengue Fever if they ever do a concert near you; you would be a fool to miss them.

They also brought CDs to sell, circumventing the Dengue Fever boycott operated by Dublin shops. So I now have all their albums. The other ones (Escape from the Dragon House and an untitled one) feature less songs in English and more covers than Venus on Earth. I would be hard pressed to say whether the band on record are showing an upward or downward trajectory. I mean, obviously there is a whole selling out to whitey aspect to recording songs in English (on the earlier albums, they have original songs but with vocals translated into Khmer), but I am not sure that I would like the sublime 'Tiger Phone Card' if I could not understand what they were singing.

One odd feature of the untitled album is its featuring a cover of Ethiopian jazzer Mulatu Astatqé's 'Yègellé Tezeta' (from vol.4 in the Éthiopiques series). They change the title to 'Ethanopium'. The sleevenotes do not advance a tendentious argument about the Khmer origins of Ethio-jazz.

You find some deadly pictures if you do a Google image search for "Dengue Fever"

random blog post by someone else on Dengue Fever and the Khmer Pop scene of the past

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Dengue Fever "Venus On Earth"

So yeah, as previously noted, Dengue Fever are the band mysteriously thrown together by these American fellows who developed an interest in the exciting pop music that existed in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge took over and decided to kill everyone. They found some beautiful Cambodian American woman to front their band, and so a winning formula was born. It is striking, though, how fresh Dengue Fever sound, and how unlike some lamer covers band. A lot of this, of course, comes down to their decision to write their own tunes, ones which nod stylistically to the Khmer Pop sounds of yore while still being new and exciting and oddly surf influenced. That the DF singer has an amazing voice is of course no hindrance.

On this record, some of the tracks are sung in Khmer, but some are also sung in English, for maximum whitey appeal. Two of these are duets between the woman and the main American fellow, on which he reveals a weak yet surprisingly affecting voice. These tunes play to ideas of trans-Pacific relationships (with their slight undercurrent of exploitation mixed in with all the gooey wuv*) and are, for me, the highlights of the album. My particular favourite is 'Tiger Phone Card', with the song being a duet between two lovers singing down the phone from opposite ends of the world. It got a lot of play in Panda Mansions while Irene was off in Ethiopia.

I also like the tune that knocks off 'Hotel California', and indeed all the other songs. I gather they played at the recent Electric Picnic festival. I wonder how they went down with the young people; well enough, presumably, as they are coming back to play in the Sugar Club in November. I already have my reasonably priced ticket, maybe see you there?


* Or maybe I have been reading too much of Barbara Ehrenreich's Global Women, current contender for being the World's Most Depressing Book.