THE DIRTBOMBS

Party Store

[In the Red]

Garage rock and soul are both unavoidable influences for any Detroit band reared on the local drinking water. The Dirtbombs love their Motown and Stooges, but they also know the city didn’t stop producing good music in the ’70s. Here the band explores a more obscure era of hometown history, covering a series of innovative techno singles from the ’80s and ’90s. The originals were recorded with drum machines and analog synths, and while the Dirtbombs experiment with said machinery they mostly keep it garage, using stomp-clap drums, pulsing eighth-note bass and hacking, smoke-choked guitars to recreate each blip and beat. The gritty instrumentation chafes against the hopefulness of “Good Life” and underscores the irony of “Sharivari,” a glitzy nightclub anthem for a post-industrial wasteland. On the latter, frontman Mick Collins plays European sophisticate, adopting a French accent and singing about Porsches. It’s Motor City sacrilege, but with its dirty-sexy motoric rhythm, it’s somehow completely reverent: the streets set to music. –Kenneth Partridge