The Dirty Novels – Stealing Kisses

Opening the bands bio is the following statement : “Welcome to the Glam Side of Life, where music is king, kisses are currency and flirting is mandated by law. This is where The Dirty Novels call home.” After reading that statement on the Albuquerque, New Mexico band The Dirty Novels, I thought that this album might either be fun or at least have a unique style. Within listening to the first song off their debut full length album “Stealing Kisses“, I realized I was right. The Dirty Novels do have a unique style – one that completely sucks.

The Dirty Novels label themselves, their image and their sound as seductive 70’s classic rock ‘n’ roll akin to The Rolling Stones and MC5. Quite the bold claim, but if the band actually believes its true they either have been greatly deceived or have woeful hearing issues. I eventually pushed on to hear the whole album but instead of hearing their self proclaimed seductive 70’s classic rock signature sound, I heard complete miserable failure. “Stealing Kisses” leans more towards cheap, imitation, sleazy garage band rock, akin to anyone of your unsigned neighbours (coincidently The Dirty Novels are also unsigned). Wearisome, dreary vocals lead these repetitious songs and stand out as being slightly worse than the monotonous music that they accompany. While its common to get bored while listening to a lot of albums from start to finish, I don’t often find myself getting bored within the first minute of every track on an album. There is no substance in any of the songs with boring guitar riffs that copy uninspired drumming and pathetic attempts at hooks. Like seriously you gotta know that you can’t write a song when your lead hook is written around “la la la, la la la, la la lala”, as featured on the opening track “In My Eyes“. “My Love Is Electric” starts out showing some promise with an intro that surprisingly has a slight hint of energy, but even then it only lasts until the dreadful vocals kick in ruining the song completely. When a whole album continues using the same pattern set in the first song and nearly every song starts exactly the same following through with a similar vibe, the only word that comes to mind is boring. However while trying to come up with something nice to say I did find a slight miniscule bright spot, that being the odd guitar solo and the occasional creative bass lines from the bass player who goes by the name of “Dandee”.

Even if you try to give this horrid album excuses for being true indie, self-released garage music, you will only arrive at the same conclusion I have. Its a complete piece of garbage and a waste of time listening to it. Having said that and finished my review, I’ll never listen to this album again.