Dirty Mittens
Can you really depend on appearances? Many people still say that shoes make the man, but sometimes there’s a little something else going on behind what is immediately visible. For instance, say you’re walking down a street in the Covent Garden area of London, England in the XVIIIth century. You’ll likely come across a popular place named Tom King’s Coffee House. For all appearances and purposes, it’s just that, a coffee house: a place where someone could sit down to enjoy a hot beverage with an array of small snacks. But, in reality, Tom King’s was the meeting place of choice for prostitutes to hook up with customers, without being an actual brothel. The establishment owners and their patrons even developed their own coded lingo to keep the morality police from infiltrating their little cosm.
Considering that, you’d have to admit to there being something inherently cute about a band naming itself “Dirty Mittens” and bestowing Pinky Swear as the title of their first EP. And when you listen to The Dock, it’s hard not to be immediately caught up in singer Chelsea Morrisey’s breathy, winsome voice. “I bet a mouse would love this music,” says my girlfriend upon completing her own listen. But the breezy nature of the song and its light, shuffling, e-pop arrangements are carrying something heavier, a burdensome strain which inflects an understated craving to the song. “Oh, I’ve had enough/Throwing them off the dock to be buried/All these lonely thoughts/Goodbye loneliness” sings Morrisey amidst the unsettled sidle of horns and the blue key pads humming in the background, pining for a release from onerous, isolating feelings which swim amidst her mind, hoping to be as carefree as the timbre of the song would permit her to do. Adorable, yes. Cutesy, no way. The Dock is too well-rounded and surreptitious to be disregarded forthright.
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