Dirty Heads - Dirty Heads


Dirty Heads
Dirty Heads
2016
Spotify

If you thought a bunch of guys from Orange County were done doing reggae/rap/alternative well then you obviously haven't heard of the new self titled release from Dirty Heads. The band has said in interviews that they wanted to make the album of the summer perfect for night and day which is why tracks are separated between those two vibes. How do I know this? I read it. There is so a little of a difference between tracks on one side of the other to even bring it up seems silly. While much of the album is breezy and does have a summer vibe it also comes with almost no edge. If you swapped out the two singers for a couple of the kids from the Disney channel the songs would probably land with a similar effect. On "Doesn't Make You Right" the end of the song descends into an almost party and jazz exploration that is laughable at best. It's like Dirty Heads are doing their best imitation of a complex and nuanced band, but the delivery is so cringe. I am not a big fan of the term "cultural appropriation" because the blending of different cultures and experiences is one of the best parts of being a human, but Dirty Heads on this record feel like they are just copy pasting rather than having their own take. Their influences are so varied that bringing them together creates more of a mishmash than a real blend.

Sometimes with these rap/rock groups either the singing is better than the rapping or vice versa, but here both are equally bad. Dirty Heads seem like that band from high school who still play the local haunts, and all the locals love them but it is only because they are the only thing there. In the wide world this music just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The laid back vibe that the band tries to embody is right on the surface track after track but it also gives you the sense that they are sleeping through these tracks. "Oxygen" barely gets over a snooze in terms of energy, and the same can be said for most of the "Night" tracks, though "Day" is not all that lit up either. "Smoke & Dream" which is the worst version of a "Roxanne" inspired song I have ever heard starts sounding like the police classic then drops into some kind of awkward EDM/Reggae mix and it plays like we are all supposed to be jumping for joy that they dropped these EDM sounds on us, but they are really bad.  The "Night" section is much much worse than the "Day" but it all is really not that good. Maybe if you live next to the coast in Huntington Beach this is your kind of music, but for the rest of us Dirty Heads is a hard pass.

1.9 out of 10

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