Dirty On Purpose, With Great Purpose
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 21, 2006 3:24PM
“Sweet baby Jesus!”
This was our initial thought upon hearing the proper full-length debut, Hallelujah Sirens, from Brooklyn’s Dirty On Purpose. We had enjoyed their EP that was released a few years ago. It was filled with an intriguing blend of shoegaze melodies that we were easily able to recommend to friends. We weren’t entirely sold on the band, since the premise of their sound seemed a bit limited and while they had the perfect number of tunes for an EP we doubted the group could stretch the magic out to cover a full album’s worth of material.
Well, along came Hallalujah Sirens to blow our collective socks off and directly down our throat since our feet were already both placed firmly in mouth. The group still has definite shoegaze qualities but they have taken their original template of gauzy guitars interwoven with brambles and prickers, and expanded into gentle pop, tender folk, and even include a batch of swaggering horns aimed on perfect musical punctuation. In a year overladen with musical hyperbole as publication after publication tries to discover “the next big thing” we believe that many solid acts are being overlooked in favor of polarizing flashes in the pan. So we feel relatively secure in touting Dirty On Purpose as not being the next big thing. Instead, we’ll just say that the band has constructed one of the most satisfying records we’ve heard this year and leave it at that.
We are betting that their live show will serve to expand the album’s selections with some healthy guitar freak-outs and a bit more swagger, but we would actually be just as happy if the group was to merely stay within the confines of Hallalujah Sirens’ song structures without any embellishment. That is to say, we’re hoping for the former but in this rare instance we’d even be happy with the latter. The group plays an early show at Beat Kitchen tonight and then heads over to host an after-party (we assume they’ll be spinning their own favorite records) at Chicago’s coolest new little bar, The Continental.