The Climax Of The Night

The Dirtbombs “Sharevari”

The Dirtbombs’ new album Party Store has an excellent high concept: Detroit rock band covers Detroit techno classics. It’s a very cool idea, but also a recipe for disaster. As it turns out, though, the most surprising thing about Party Store isn’t that the band decided to interpret these songs in the first place, but that they do it so convincingly without changing their standard instrumentation. Some songs work better than others — their 21-minute take on Carl Craig’s “Bug in the Bass Bin” is a noble experiment with fairly unlistenable results — but when they nail it, it’s like a scrappier version of Liquid Liquid and ESG’s minimal funk magic. Their version of A Number of Names’ “Sharevari” is my favorite, and not just because it’s a very faithful rendition of the song. I think the composition gains an exciting tension from live instrumentation and, well, I just really love the sound of the female vocals in this recording.

Buy it from Amazon.