Hamilton punks The Dirty Nil will dust the cobwebs off your New Year’s Day hangover with the release of ferocious new record, ‘Fuck Art’.
The record kicks off with the crunching riffs of ‘Doom Bay’ before moving into something more alternative rock anthem sounding on ‘Blunt Force Confusion’ – a track that features impassioned vocals delivering lyrics about cracking a head in two while declaring your love for someone. ‘Elvis ’77’ has a whirlwind of full-force guitars from the get-go as the band ask ‘In your wildest dreams, tell me what you see, how does ordinary look to you?’ This is swiftly followed by ‘Done with Drugs’, a personal piece about leaving days of hedonism behind: ‘At 17, I had a dream I’d never die but now I’ve got responsibilities and that’s why I’m done with drugs’; ‘At 29, I guess I’ve had some time to see no-one at the after party seems happy’.
A Kim Deal-esque bass line carries through the whole of the grungey ‘Hang Yer Moon’ while ‘Possession’ (which has elements of the so-called emo revival from few years back) has an important message at its core about respect: ‘Do you realize the price of pretending that everything is fine?’; ‘What the fuck do you know about affection? This isn’t love, it’s possession’. The closing duo of ‘To the Guy Who Stole My Bike’ and ‘One More and the Bill’ are also very personal, with the former having a special message – ‘To any poor fucker with an axe to grund, we’ll break even when we’re in the ground. Speak soon’ – and the latter talking about running away from responsibilities and trying to escape all the bad things in this world, amidst some stadium-style guitar solos: ‘Gonna smash my TV, smash my phone, leave politics alone’.
‘Fuck Art’ is a smash.
