The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

 Dirty Sweet hails from San Diego, but they might as well hail from Texas in 1971.  Musically, their take on the sweaty, bluesy rock of yesteryear hits the gut with the same impact that the mustachiod, mullet-topped bully, driving a Camero Z 28 (probably with a T-top or sorts), had when he stole your lunch money and then ran off to have sex with some girl you had a crush on. 

The music isn’t complicated and certainly not reinventing the wheel, but there is a timelessness to it - one that recalls why you first started listening to rock’n'roll to begin with. 

The appeal then, is that to understand or appreciate Dirty Sweet’s music, is to tap into that primal groove of stomping your foot and banging your head.  So much uninteresting music is fetishized or excused; often listeners have no idea why they like something, they just tend to like whatever is tossed their way. 

Dirty Sweet’s debut LP, Of Monarchs and Beggars, takes nothing more than having a pulse to get.  Yes, it could be described as derivative of say, T. Rex, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy, or just about anything from the Dazed and Confused Soundtrack and of course, much later The Black Crowes.  But they aren’t merely imitating, they use the dynamics of classic rock’n'roll: blues riffs, syncopated beats, the high hat, a little bit of southern rock and country, heavy basslines, etc. to construct their sound. 

It’s interesting, therefore, because it is unpretentious in a way that so much current music is not.  They aren’t trying to be important or sound like anything other than a good time bar band, but because of that authenticity and their talent (unlike say Jet) they deserve to be exhalted. 

Mp3: Dirty Sweet - “Baby Come Home” 
Mp3: Dirty Sweet - “Delilah”
Mp3: Dirty Sweet - “Sixteen”

Of Monarchs and Beggars is out now via Seedling Records.