Lead singer Lea Jaffe is a vocal chameleon with a shocking range, able to contort her lungs from track to track to craft a mood. Clocking in at just under 25 minutes the album is brief but dense with 7 mystifying songs that are all mandatory replays. It’s the sound of three friends joking and jamming through their frustrations and traumas in a dreamy punk microcosm. Dazey and the Scouts had no intention of breaking out of the scene, so Maggot is charmingly carefree. It’s always obvious when an independent artist is trying to break through to the mainstream the raw emotionality of the music gives way for gimmicks, what was real is softened for broad appeal. Today’s hyper-specific landmark is arbitrary since it's just an excuse to sing the project’s praises Maggot is a memorial to indie obscurity and a mastery of its influences. Dazey and the Scouts’ magnum opus is a boisterous and seamless feminist work that straddles the line between early femme punk and a more confessional modern emo sound. The album has also helped a group of young queer and trans people in their cult following come to terms with their identity in between killer hooks. The new fan base for the disbanded group is fitting it hasn’t been too long since the bubbly underbellies of Alt and Indie Tik Tok waged war against musical male manipulators and The Scout’s campy punk sound perfectly captures the rage directed at shitty indie men. This once unremarkable Boston band has had a resurgence online with a fresh batch of teens TikToking to two of their tracks, “ Wet”' and " Nice Nice". April 13th marks the 4 year anniversary of the streaming release of Maggot, the sole album from Dazey and the Scouts.
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