(Emergency Music/MGM)

This is what these rock stars are doing today

In their 15 years of noisy life, Victoria’s Magic Dirt have punched through with a number of songs that have stuck with us, like Dirty Jeans and Plastic Loveless Letter. But their hearts have always hankered after a tougher, testier sound. For this sixth album, they’ve defiantly gone in search of it, returning to their old haunt Birdland Studios, again with producer Lindsay Gravina, and releasing the results on their own label. The first track, Get Ready To Die, somewhere between The Divinyls and Sonic Youth, comes on like a gauntlet being thrown down and the band maintains that hardened posture through most of the ten tracks here. At their most extreme, there’s the seismic feedback-fed vortex of noise of Tremor, a short abrasive burst that’s followed by the big smear of Cupids Bow, eight minutes of slowed-down but jammed-up, nagging guitars. In between, whether it’s the gritty gravitas of Six Feet Under, the big, fuzzy heft of White Boy or the more melodic grind of Always, Adalita and the guys sink their teeth into these songs and spit them out, tough love (to borrow a phrase from them) indeed. Watch the dirt fly again.          

****

BILL HOLDSWORTH

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