The Wolf Magazine

Issue date: 3/13/09 Section: Music and Entertainment

CD cover

Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes are here with the ingredients for success: a new album, tour dates for the spring, and talent in numbers. The Dirty Notes are making an even bigger name for themselves after the release of their third studio album, "The Big Awesome."

The members of the sextet are mostly from the New Orleans area, where five of the members attended Loyola to study music. Their music is experimental as they touch on different genres - ragtime, blues, rock, funk and Latin - while always referring to a New Orleans jazz sound. The members play a variety of instruments including guitar, drums, percussion, cello, keyboards, trumpet, flugelhorn, flute, alto, baritone and tenor sax.

"The Big Awesome" starts with a tribute to their Southern roots in the song "New Dixieland." The lyrics of this song sing of a laid back city that is home. The employment of an array of horns, especially the alto and baritone sax, the trumpet, and a solo on the flugelhorn furnish thoughts of New Orleans on a humid night in 1925. The presence of spirit continues in a second line fashion as the song fades out, as if the parade were simply rolling further away. In a similar fashion, "Cora Lee" starts off with flair amid a steady beat and an emotional saxophone melody with lyrics about a girl. The song continues with a vocal harmony backing and solos on a guitar that has an almost gypsy-jazz tone and saxophone with dueling modern style.

The album pulls some funky songs out like, "Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance," with employs a blunt and technical guitar pickings, dramatizing horns that know how to stir up and play down the song using simple dynamics, wailing vocals commanding to dance, and more harmonizing back up vocals; all of which make use of repetition with improvisation. Another funk song on the album is "M' Get Dat," which uses the same style of dominating horns and quick guitar playing, but also features a great saxophone solo that impresses more through its floating precision rather than volume, rhythmic guitar accents, and a surprisingly serious toned guitar solo that briefly honors Jimi Hendrix.

A bland saxophone paired with an array of percussion instruments show the band's Latin side. The song quickly drops a drumbeat in with lyrics about a girl, simple guitar playing and harmonizing saxophones. An emotional trumpet solo comes expectedly, but an even deeper cello solo follows it unexpectedly before jumping back into the upbeat percussions. The song "The Getaway" starts off with a smooth guitar, cheerful percussion and traditional Latin horns, but the drumbeat drops in to change the tone of the song that results in a dense pairing of trumpet and electric guitar, a somber flute solo, a story of hardship in another trumpet solo and an end that restates the first phrase.

The Dirty Notes also have a taste for rock, especially in their blues inspired power rock piece, "Just Lied," that becomes heavier and grittier as the drum and guitar song progresses. The song "Kaiser" makes use of this heavy rock sound, using grunting lyrics too, but adds an experimental guitar solo using vibrato, varying drumbeats, a bass guitar solo, and an unusual saxophone solos that plays in the same tough tone.
This album is a definitive progression with exciting tastes. "The Big Awesome" is a must buy, and certainly a must see if you want to dance through the spring.

-Garrett Cleland

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools