The Dirtbombs

Party Store (In the Red)

The Dirtbombs excel at paying homage. Mick Collins’ Motor City five memorialized the protest-soul movement with 2001’s Ultraglide in Black, unearthed Death years before Drag City Records on a tour-only split 7-inch, and latest LP, Party Store, tackles Detroit disco of the late 1980s and 1990s, an era more often associated with Collins’ garage-blues minimalists, the Gories. Inspired by a quote from Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies – “Humanize something that is without error” – the Dirtbombs lend a modern punk edge to four-on-the-floor house staples like Derrick May’s “Strings of Life” and the lowrider muffle of A Number of Names’ “Sharevari” in a manner that recalls LCD Soundsystem. The future synth-funk of Cybotron’s “Cosmic Cars” shifts gears to something more symbolic of Detroit’s industrial decline, while Collins’ post-punk grit perfectly accents Carl Craig’s modular synthesizer programming on Innerzone Orchestra’s “Bug in the Bass Bin,” a 21-minute trance of Planet-E Krautrock.

***.5

This article appears in January 28 • 2011.

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