The Dwarves!!! What I love about the Dwarves is that despite the myriad changes in lineup and sound over the years, their records are always, I mean always, good. They just fucking rock start to finish every single time. How can that be? How can a band be this consistently good and fresh not just over years, but decades?!? I mean, Christ…I got my first Dwarves record in 1990 and a quarter century later they still beat me senseless with every record. The Dwarves brand means quality rock’n’roll, goddammit, and this record lives up to expectations. Of course, these days (i.e., the last four records or so) those expectations consist of songs that alternate between bouncy, melodic, quasi-pop tunes with ultra-underbelly lyrical content and full-on punk rock ragers, along with a few forays into other genres here and there. And this record doesn’t disappoint in that regard either, but it pains me greatly to say that it seems just a wee bit formulaic this time. Oh well. Don’t care. It’s the fucking Dwarves, man! If anything, this record is a bit more heavily weighted on the rager side than the last several releases, and there’s less production value on this record than we’ve gotten used to, so the overall effect is what I imagine would be the sonic equivalent of having my skin taken off with a blowtorch and enjoying it. The Dwarves!!!
–Eric Carlson (Burger / Greedy)