The new album By Dirty Streets is on the normally really cool Alive Natural Sounds (offshoot of the legendary Bomp!) Label so I was more than happy to volunteer to review this before I'd heard it. I hadn't figured on it being so boring that the second time I played the album it got to track 7 before a single tune made an impression on me!!
The fact the album, which is the band's fourth, was recorded at Memphis' legendary Ardent Studio confirms that without doubt these guys can certainly play really well and - fair's fair - this is an album of very tight blues rock that is almost cock-rock in places and that is where my problem stems from. As ultimately this is just, well, lumpen blues that tries to be like the North Mississippi All Stars but ends up being like a really boring Stone Sour record.
Yes songs like Think Twice would probably sound great in a bar after 5 or 6 pints with the squalling guitar intro and lyrics about working in a factory or whatever, but like most of this album it quickly slips into being background blues-rock as it has nothing to make it stand out. The album lacks a single spark of originality, so if you want to hear a very proficient bar band making a by no means badly played album then you might get more out of it that I do, but I just find it has more bluster than finesse and because of this, at times it makes White Horse sound like fifth rate Black Crowes copyists.
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I think I'm meant to salivate at Good Kind Of Woman like it is a long lost Cream tune but it just sounds so dated and well boring. Indeed, the longer the album goes on the less interested in it I am so that by the time they get all slow and meandering on the penultimate song I'm just waiting for it to be over they even make Joe Bonamassa seem interesting and he bored me to death too.
Finally the album comes to an end with the title track. I think it's trying to be like the Allman Brothers but I can never imagine any of this lot marrying today's equivalent of Cher, so say a Kim Kardashian: no, this lot are not even close to that.
If you like lumpen dated 70's blues rock bar bands then Dirty Streets may be for you. Just don't make me have to listen to this album a fourth time - three was two more than it deserved.
Find out more at: Dirty Streets online
Dirty Streets online
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