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By David Scott Evans
Dirty Vegas. They're the band responsible for a current word of mouth. They're "the ones in the car ad". They're the ones I've heard about in the hair salon. They're the ones you may hear in the background at your friend's house. They are Dirty Vegas and "that Song" is Days Go By. Everyone who hears it asks "where have I heard that?" It's that ubiquitous. And it's that good. Now definitely it isn't about the lyrics - moldering adolescent poetry - but the sincerity and execution of the music itself. One reviewer on Amazon.com remarked that it was nice to hear club-esque music with lyrics , likening them to the "Pet Shop Boys minus pop strategy" (my turn of phrase). Hmmm, I might agree. A little pop-schlocky, yet sexy….the electronically enhanced fellow's voice emanating from the speakers help create an afterglow that I may or may not have been privy to; it's like waking up after a good lay. It seeps in, making for a warm fuzzy with a decent beat. If one had a better reason to listen to 21st century music, why look further? Dirty Vegas embodies all the basic precepts of early eighties New Wave. The conversion/convergence between the supposed Futurists of the 80s (Heaven 17, Human League et al.) and the gung-ho-whores of the beats-per-minute set carried meanderingly may have actually found their missing musical link. Maybe they (we?) all have begun to make peace. Yes of course there are other songs on the disc. Lets wander through the jots and tittles, trying to describe their subtleties such as that smile on the Mona Lisa. Bright spots occur early on the disc. The deceptively serene strains of the opening lines in "I Should Know": " I'll show you things that you've never seen, and I know places you've never been" They break into a rhythmic pastiche of swirling synth reminiscent perhaps of late era "Everything But the Girl", albeit not cerebrally endowed like "EBTG", there's a semblance of humanity as the song culminates as it began, with thoughtful, plinking acoustics.
Ghosts opens, as its more famous disc-mate does, with verve. Layers of synth balanced with lilting lyrics are thrust into beatific swirls of strategically-honed chaos, counter-balanced with rhythm. For the next few songs one should be able to actually dance without chemical enhancement (if so desirous), all the while feeling subtly caressed by the lead singer's smoky meanderings.
His meanderings bring to me #6 on the disc, "Candles", - and from this point and into the next few songs- we're treated to some very trippy, seemingly enervated juxtapositions: The downtime between HI-N-RG and perhaps a smoke or a grope. "Candles" hauntingly reminds us that after we've danced our asses off we've "been burning the candle at both ends". The treat at the end of the disc is a slowed-down version of "Days Go By" and somewhere in the mélange is a concerted nod to those ole trip-meisters like Pink Floyd. Very interesting. Are our lil club rats growing up….? Frankly this album bodes well for not only the band and their probably-all-too-overpaid-management but IMHO music in general. If this is garnering airplay- weighing in against whiny girls with acoustic guitars and simpering boy bands, or-Zeus help us ©rap - then the evolution that those pre-post-modernist, self professed Futurists in the music world envisioned may yet come to pass: The marriage of digital/synth and(albeit grudgingly) acoustic with lyrical imagery still intact. Wouldn't hurt my feelers any. |
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Apparently I've been missing out on a fairly old advertisement (months old, I suppose) for something called a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Not having lived in a total vacuum, I realize, it isn't a Rising Sun redux, but a car ad. From most reports this commercial has been a hit, targeting audiences who know something about house/trance/techno music. That, by the way, is the uber-thump we encounter at present club sessions.