Dirtmusic - Dirtmusic

by John Clarkson

published: 7 / 1 / 2008

Label: Glitterhouse Records
Format: CD

Fine in moments, but somehwat lacking in spark blues/folk on debut album from Dirt Music, which includes the Walkabouts Chris Eckman, former Birthday Party and Bad Seeds guitarist Hugo Race one-time Come and Codeine member Chris Brokaw

Review

Dirt Music features Chris Eckman, the vocalist and guitarist with the Walkabouts ; Hugo Race, the former Birthday Party and Bad Seeds guitarist and now the leader of True Spirit, and solo artist and one-time Come and Codeine member Chris Brokaw. The musically heavyweight trio went into a studio in Prague last year to record an album of blues/folk songs using as their name suggests largely roots-based instruments and have since toured together. Each have contributed four tracks to their twelve track eponymous debut album, singing on their own songs and providing guitars, organ, percussion and Brokaw also drums to their own and each other's tunes. It is an album, as might be expected, of some very fine moments. As he has also shown in his recent solo career, Brokaw proves equally at home these days writing breezy instrumentals such as opener 'Erica Moody' as well as more narrative and harmony-driven pieces on the ambient folk of his compositions. Hugo Race provides growling vocals and spooky atmospherics on the brooding and sinister-beautiful psychedelia of 'Still Running', while Chris Eckman comes up with the album's highlight track , the seven minute rip-roaring , distorted jug country blues of 'Ballad for a Dream'. Yet, despite this, 'Dirt Music' often lacks spark, coming across sometimes as somewhat languid. It is all a little too dreamy in sound and laid back in delivery for its own good, too regularly simply drifting along when Eckman, Race and Brokaw, as they have shown they can do on 'Ballad for a Dream', really need to be pumping up the pace. While 'Dirt Music' never sounds less than beautiful, collectively there is a too much of a sameness to too many of its tracks and, with a running time of what turns into a lengthy hour ,it is simply too long. Any project collating together musicians of such a calibre as Chris Eckman, Hugo Race and Chris Brokaw is always going to be worth searching out . They have each individually been involved in creating some of the best alternative rock music of the last 20 years, but 'Dirt Music', while scatteringly impressive, is as a result of that something of a disappointment.

Track Listing:-

1 Erica Moody
2 The Other Side
3 Sun City Casino
4 Face of Evil
5 The Returning
6 Still Running
7 Summer Days
8 Ballad of a Dream
9 No Sorrow More
10 Panther Hunting
11 Wasted On
12 Morning Dew