Dirty Oretty

With a brand-new single, "Won't Take Me Alive", already Top 20 at U.S. rock radio, and coming off of two consecutive, sold-out 2023 headline tours of Europe, DIRTY HONEY, one of rock's hottest young bands, will release a new album, "Can't Find The Brakes", on November 3. Both the album's title track, "Can't Find The Brakes", and "Won't Take Me Alive" are now available as instant-grat tracks when you pre-save/pre-add/pre-order the album.

There's something beautiful about a band's unbridled live energy mixed with an audience's excitement that breathes new life into songs.

Calling what they do "outlaw folk American," the El Paso, Texas-born band the Dirty River Boys generate an energetic blend of tight narrative songs, bluegrass drive, multi-part vocal harmonies, gospel passion, and a solid dose of rock & roll attitude into a potent mix that is all the more amazing for being entirely acoustic.

Deluxe Edition 2 CD set features 35 tracks including b-sides and previously unreleased versions. Sonic Youth's second major-label album, produced and mixed by Butch Vig and Andy Wallace (a team that had helped turn Nirvana's NEVERMIND multi-platinum) was not the barefaced bid for mainstream acceptance that surly underground souls grumbled about in the pages of fanzines. While Vig and Wallace give guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon, and phenomenal drummer Steve Shelley a wide-screen panorama for their bizarrely-tuned assaults, DIRTY is probably Sonic Youth's most uncompromising album since 1985's BAD MOON RISING–particularly in the lyrical department. Dropping the deliberate obscurantism, Philip K. Dick references, and smart-alecky snottiness, Sonic Youth brackets a slew of pointed political attacks ("Youth Against Fascism," "Swimsuit Issue," and the Jesse Helms-bashing "Chapel Hill") with two passionate tributes to the band members' murdered friend, Joe Cole ("100%" and "JC"). That DIRTY is Sonic Youth's most commercial-sounding album makes it that much more subversive.

Admittedly, Mike Campbell's first album with the Dirty Knobs two years ago passed me by to some extent. Although the songs of Tom Petty would not have been scalded without Campbell's pointed guitar playingthe same ones, of course, and also what he does on Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer", for example, is terrific – but when accompanying musicians become bandleaders, it often doesn't turn out too exciting.

In 1971, during a time of massive transition in Hollywood and of social upheaval in America at large, director Don Siegel and actor Clint Eastwood created one of the most memorable figures in all of action cinema, a bad-tempered San Francisco policeman "Dirty" Harry Callahan, not averse to bending the rules to get his man. The maniacal 'Scorpio Killer' is on the loose and Callahan disregards procedure in his efforts to track him down, using his trusty Magnum .44 to dispense his own brand of justice.

Since the unexpected 2017 death of Tom Petty, longtime Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell has carried on with his band The Dirty Knobs. Joined by Lance Morrison (bass), Matt Laug (drums)and key new addition Chris Holt (guitars, keys, vocals), and recorded by Petty's former brain trust of producers George Drakoulias and Martin Pradler, the Knobs are guitar rock in the classic sense. Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits begins and ends with audience applause, starting with "The Greatest," Campbell's salute to his audience. Closer "Amanda Lynn" is a mandolin frolic originally meant as walk-out music for his live shows. While his voice can be eerily reminiscent of his old bandmate, Campbell is clearly his own man on this third Knobs album—anchored by a pair of well-written, wonderfully recorded numbers. Paced by strummed guitars and ex-Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone, "Angel of Mercy" is the tale of a dangerous femme fatale ("There's too much complication/ I can't figure out/ What she's leading up to/ What she's all about") whose charms are nevertheless irresistible: "Angel of mercy/ Wake me, shake me/ Take me all the way." That's followed by "Dare to Dream," where steady, chiming guitars give way to joyous choruses on which Graham Nash adds sublime vocal support.