“The sun still shines behind the spider web…” There’s more to Spanish music than flamenco, which The Dirt Tracks clearly demonstrate. Lead vocalist Coma’s style, strongly reminiscent of Thom E Yorke and Matt Bellamy, backed by strong, punchy instrumentation, offers little suggestion of their Iberian roots.
The Anglosphere influences are evident on their new three-track EP, mastered at Abbey Road. The introduction to the pacy title track could easily pass as Britpop, a feeling which lingers throughout the song’s three-and-a-half odyssey and its stabbing guitar chords, tight drum pattern and the closing electronic coda. ‘House Of Dolls’ takes a low-fi tack more akin to garage rock, with bass and lead guitar guiding the song to atmospheric vocals and blistering riffs in the chorus.
Closing track ‘The Square’ again tips its hat to Radiohead; its combination of Coma’s falsetto, acoustic-driven verses, bass bridges and distorted phrases mirrors ‘Paranoid Android’, but not to the extent of being a total rip-off. Radiohead certainly never threw in carnival sound effects in the outros to any of their canon; here, its use matches the pace of the whole track.
In all, the ‘Never Been To Mars’ collection of songs sees The Dirt Tracks weave together the cosmopolitan sounds that inspire them and still embed a unique aesthetic.
For more information visit the official The Dirt Tracks website.
