Ever
notice how different set of ears can hear things, well, differently? Take Oakland, California quartet
Everything is Dirty. Peruse the online reviews and you’ll find numerous
references to Grunge. Art rock. Psychedelic. The meaning of pigeon-hole tags
(which all us music scribblers adore ) shift over time as music changes. For
instance, Soul used to mean cornbread vocals by Sam & Dave, backed by
plenty of horns. These days, soul means (ugh) Robin Thicke or (less ugh) Duffy.
That ‘90s catchall phrase “alternative rock” was the watered-down but
occasionally worthy successor to ‘80s “indie” on labels like Merge or 4AD but just degenerated into describing knuckleheads
like Fred Durst.
If Everyone Is Dirty is grunge then so is Weezer. Art noise? Sure, there’s some droning here and there but I guess
anything vaguely atonal is noise to the masses who nowadays prefer songs that
are more beat than melody or harmony or anything else that was once the
hallmark of popular (pop) music. Live,
the band does tend to venture a bit too heavily into improv and jam, two words that
always fill me with dread. Singer Sivan Gur-Arieh takes her electric violin
into Jean-Luc Ponty territory ( in spirit it must be stressed and not in talent or execution) while Christopher
Daddio's guitar solos are at times
longer than necessary but not by much. This is good for a guy like me whose
attention wanders when the soloist noodles around above the fifth or sixth fret. Psychedelic?
Please. Only people that have never taken drugs use that word.
Here’s
my take: Their recorded output is post-Breeders, post-post Pixies, texture-rich and crunchy
with vocals reminiscent of Louise Post (Veruca Salt), Christina Amphlett
(Divinyls) and Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses) (And if four “posts” in one
sentence isn’t enough, I don’t know what is). As a live act, though, because of the jam aspect I'm a little trepidatious.
Everyone Is Dirty , LadyUranium , Nocturnal Company
Monday
July 14, 2014
2823
2nd Street NW
8pm
doors
$5
