Diarrhea Planet – Loose Jewels

I’m calling Loose Jewels a guilty pleasure, okay? This thing has “dumb” written all over it – the band name, the crappy pixelated cover, all of it. And yet Diarrhea Planet, a Nashville six-piece with an awful name and no less than four guitarists, totally surprised the hell out of me. Loose Jewels is comprised of 11 buoyant and infectiously catchy tracks. They don’t wear out their welcome – these dudes know what brevity means, and few of these songs make it to the ninety-second mark, with the whole album coming in at less than eleven minutes. It’s an intrinsically fun record – I’m reminded, both vocally and somewhat structurally, of Future Virgins, though Loose Jewels doesn’t have the same levels of intelligence or world weariness. But smarts are not the point here, are they?

And for a band that’s saddled (or blessed) themselves with so many guitars, their reliance on audio trickery is refreshingly minimal. These are, at their core, solid rock songs, with brief nods to punk and a wonderfully dense guitar sound that propels everything forward. The group chorus on “Ice Age” brings to mind Direct Hit’s frenzied “Werewolf Shame”, but the structure from “Warm Ridin” could have come straight from The Kinks, and the refrain in “My Dubs” is enough to make Freddie Mercury proud. And yet for all of that, the theatrics never hinder the momentum. This thing blazes, all ten-minutes-and-change.

Like I said, the songs seem less than cerebral (I’m assuming here; Infinity Cat’s ridiculously skimpy when it comes to their promos, so I’m only going by what I can discern from the lyrics) – but again, who cares? Loose Jewels is over before you know it, but the hooks are consistently there. This one’s worthy of seeking out, and worthy of repeated listens.