The Dirtbombs have big brushes. They’re painting whole sides of buildings in broad swaths, not just doing detail work on a dirty toilet in the garage rock ghetto. Nick Collins is my generation’s underground answer to Otis Redding with a more ambitious selection of cover songs (Sparks, Dead Moon, a song intended for Bauhaus this time around). It’s soulful music played with such force, taste, and restraint that the one true shame is that the rest of the world is asleep at the wheel when it comes to The Dirtbombs (in a time when Stax is getting some of the notoriety it so richly deserves). Has it really been nearly twenty years since that first Gories LP? Damn, it’s a long journey from House Rockin’, and I have to say I like both of these book-ending records equally as well for completely different reasons. How many artists can you say that about? If you haven’t already checked out the Dirtbombs, the double CD of singles that In The Red released a couple years back is a good, hearty view of this band, too.
–todd (In The Red, www.inthered.com)