Review Summary: The Band That Wouldn't Die, Part 5: Nothin’ But Hits, B*tch
Holy smokes, what a great album!
The Dwarves are Young and Good Looking mashes the peppy melodic hardcore of
Thank Heaven for Little Girls into the Ramones-y pop-punk that briefly cropped up on
Sugarfix and slathers it all in the best production The Dwarves have ever had. It sounds incredibly polished, but by some miracle doesn’t come off as slick or processed whatsoever. The guitars are brutally melodic and wonderfully textured, the drums pack a hundred times more wallop than on any of their previous records, and Blag Dahlia turns in yet another stellar vocal performance, including both some of his most competent singing and his most aggressive shouting since Blood, Guts and Pussy.
And I haven’t even discussed the actual songwriting yet! All these songs are fantastic. With the sole exception of the ironically named filler track “Hits” every single song on
Young and Good Looking is just stupidly catchy. Look at the track list, and pick out a song. Is it “Hits”? If not, you will get it stuck in your head after hearing it, and you’ll be glad about it too because Blag and his cohorts know how to capture and concentrate the simple pleasures of pop music without resorting to hacky shortcuts or dumb clichés. There are so many great little moments that make the songs stand out even more. Prime examples of this include the nifty key change in the bridge of “Everybody’s Girl”, the hilarious little snippet of dialogue that opens up “The Ballad of Vadge Moore”, and that part on“I Will Deny” where Blag starts talking really softly before slowly building up volume again until he’s screaming “I WANNA DIE!” over and over again.
The lyrics are great sleazy fun, too, and for the first time they’re more or less appropriate to sing along to in public. Of course, Blag still serves up a heaping helping of snot-nosed belligerence, but apart from dropping a couple dozen F-bombs, the actual content of the songs is, if not tame, then at least non-graphic enough for a moderately hip adult person to stomach. Tales of promiscuity on “Everybody’s Girl”? Teaching children to worship Satan on “The Crucifixion is Now”? Refusing to pray on “You Gotta Burn”? This is the kind of stuff Alice Cooper would sing about, but played with so much energy and ferocity that the danger almost feels real. Not dangerously real, of course, but real enough to be a boatload of fun nonetheless.
The Dwarves are Young and Good-Looking is the perfect synthesis of everything that’s awesome about punk rock. It’s the kind of rebellious that has a certain well-worn timelessness to it. For as long as boring, square office drones are yelling at their kids to turn that damn music down, Young and Good Looking will be the perfect record to piss ‘em off with. With it, The Dwarves struck the perfect balance between aggression and accessibility, a winning recipe they would prove to have a little trouble sticking to on their next album...
