Indie Rock Review (The Dirty Heads)

Hey guys and gals again,



Sooooo in between my blogs that discuss indie rock and your introduction to the indie scene of music I will be doing music reviews from past years or present releases.

I hope that by giving these reviews you can better find new groups or artists that may interest you. All the while that I'm doing this I will also keep posting my "Bands Of The Week" on the side bar, so keep up with them too as they will be changing each week and may not be the same as these reviews.

Here is my first review; it is going to review the band known as The Dirty Heads. I also plan on doing a bunch more reviews on releases from the last two years over the next couple weeks, so keep following. Please remember, all my reviews are opinionated, so you may hate what I like and like what I hate, I will try to stay open minded but I just want you to know that, if I rip on a band, it doesn’t mean you won't like them.

So here we go:

I'm going to start off with what I believe was the #1 biggest single of 2010 in the world of Indie Rock. This I believe is "Lay Me Down" by The Dirty Heads (feat. Rome). This is very fitting because Rome is one of the originators of ska-punk, being the front man of 90's ska-punk band Sublime. 

The Dirty Heads are also ska-punk band and they hail from Huntington Beach, California. This song was amazing, coming off of the record "Any Port In The Storm" it is really a diamond in the rough. This album was originally released in 2008, however off the original release only one single was put out, this being "Stand Tall". The album was then later re-released in 2010 with many bonus tracks including an acoustic version of "Viva La Vida" which is really well done.

However, I found that this band was very hit and miss, even though they have only released one album. "Lay Me Down" is absolutely amazing, "Stand Tall" is also a very strong song, and the acoustic cover of "Viva La Vida" is as solid as they come, but after that I found little substance to the record. They tried to pull off some heavier, fast-riffed music which I found lacked a lot of substance, and the acoustic songs that really made this record what it was were few and far between. I believe that the success of their sophomore album will depend on if they go to what they are good at, this being the up-tempo ska-heavy acoustic-punk we saw in their singles from “Any Port In The Storm”.

Below I have the videos for Lay Me Down and Stand Tall, if you wish to find the acoustic cover of Viva La Vida you can easily find it on YouTube.

Lay Me Down

 Stand Tall

Till the next review.

Jon