The House That Dirt Built by The Heavy
LABEL: Counter Records
“The songs will reach out and pull you in. And it’ll feel so good, that you’ll want to take up a permanent residence…”
The first thought that came to mind somewhere along my first listen to The House That Dirt Built, was Quentin Tarantino. I had a vision of Uma Thurman in a blood-soaked wedding gown, walking out of a church in the middle of the desert to "Short Change Hero". You’ve got these ominous sound effects as the song begins: thunder, melancholy bells, deep procession-like drums, spaghetti-western-like-guitar styling and these mournful voices. These devices carry the listener effortlessly into the hypnotic pulses of this soulful track. The album, as a whole, has got the depth, deliberate darkness and ingenuity of a Tarantino flick. Imagine my surprise (or lack there of, really) when I realized that the band’s second studio album took its title from one of the most famous scenes in all of Quentin’s movies. That would be, "Great Vengeance And Furious Fire," and the suggested scene is, of course, from Pulp Fiction. I had to smile to myself, acknowledging that I was adequately feeling the intended vibe.
While The Heavy is somewhat new to me, for those acquainted with their previous work it is old news, I would imagine, that these guys are so unmistakably original. They are one of those bands that you need a paragraph to describe their ‘genre’. I’m going to go out on a limb and call it ROCK… but not, because it’s really so much more. I felt the presence of Led Zeppelin in the wrenching vocals on ‘Sixteen’ while simultaneously feeling the eccentricities of Tom Waits. Next thing you know, I’m getting my reggae on in “Cause For Alarm”. But here’s the thing. It all makes perfect sense.
Yet their originality goes even deeper than this. Each track on The House That Dirt Built stands alone. It makes me think of David Bowie and the thing that absolutely KILLS me about him. Each one of his songs is so unmistakably different from one another, yet each song is so unmistakably HIS. That is what these guys do on The House That Dirt Built.
At this point I could write about the album for days. I could go on about each track because each song is worth writing about. But it really just comes down to this. This is some of the best shit I’ve heard in long, long time. The songs will reach out and pull you in. And it’ll feel so good, that you’ll want to take up a permanent residence… in The House That Dirt Built. 
REVIEWED BY LYNN SHER
LYNN'S FAVORITE TRACKS: "Cause For Alarm" • "How You Like Me Now" • "Stuck"
You can listen to Lynn’s work in The SaVAgE KiNGs on myspace
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