Album Reviews

On their first new album in three years, Arizona’s AJJ still tries to find glimmers of light in an ever more confusing  and depressing world, and in the process become one themselves.

Dirty Old Power packs a dozen new songs that find a band with nothing left to prove, proving plenty. As is customary on AJJ albums, it’s almost impossible to predict what the next song will sound like and if it wasn’t so obvious that a lot of effort and care went into the arrangements and vivid - yet bleak - lyrical imagery, you could be forgiven for thinking that these songs are like ideas for songs that were jotted down and then tossed aside.

Is this protest music? The soundtrack to the apocalypse? Or both? Who knows. Fact is that AJJ once again manage to surprise, entertain and sting on cuts like opener “Beauty And Truth 2” and  “Florid Language”, get increasingly dark on “Phlamethrower” and “Hungry House” and channel their inner Modest Mouse on “Wasted On A Boeing”.

For a band nine albums and twenty years into their career, AJJ’s creative well remains remarkably deep. They continue to burst with fresh ideas while sounding completely, unapologetically unlike anyone else.

Dirty Old Power track listing:

1. Beauty and Truth 2
2. Dirty Old Power
3. Destiny
4. Update
5. Phlamethrower
6. Hungry House
7. Bitch Ass World
8. Florid Language
9. Window in Yr Mind
10. Wasted on a Boeing
11. No Home in This World
12. Human Centipede