I’ve been reading a lot about revolution lately—Jed Rubenfeld’s novel The Death Instinct, the new revised edition of Paul Krassner’s autobiography Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, the overthrow of the Nome King in Ozma of Oz…
And The Dirtbombs is the perfect soundtrack.
The Detroit-based band’s brand new album Party Store is the second half of a manifesto begun a decade ago with the unabashedly brilliant and influential instant indie classic Ultraglide in Black. (Wanted to make it sound like a ‘70s K-Tel collection there for a moment.) Both albums cover songs which helped form the eclectic tastes of bandleader Mick Collins (whose ‘80s band The Gories has already assured him a place in the punk history books), but the setlists are studiously constructed from lesser-known soul or R&B records. Ultraglide covers the ‘60s and ‘70s while Party Store partakes of the ‘80s. The differences in the eras are heightened by the selections: Ultraglide is full of fleeting frat-rock rave-ups such as “The Thing” (which belongs alongside Dave Clark 5’s “The Place” in the pantheon of willfully underdescriptive scene-setting singles) and the respectful Dirtbombs original “Your Love Belongs Under a Rock.”

Ultraglide covered one well-known hit, Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ for the City,” but countered that atypical burst of familiarity with a cutting version of Thin Lizzy leader Phil Lynott’s “Ode to a Black Man,” a harmonica-blurting critique of contemporary pop that tells Stevie Wonder “I don’t want no songs for plants, I want songs for me.” Party Store pulls off a similar upset by letting the seminal 1981 Detroit techno track “Sharevari” (by A Number of Names) face off against a leisurely beat of a decade and a half later and a refined jazz background, Innerzone Orchestra’s “Bug in the Bass Bin.”

Which brings us back to revolution—the “Revolution #9” variety. Some fans might blanch at a punk band whose own opuses tend to average out at two and a half minutes lurching relentlessly through over 21 minutes of “Bug in the Bass Bin” (over three times the length of the original, including a two-minute overture that sounds like revving engines). For me, it’s the heart of Party Store—literally so, since it arrives midway through the album, but also because it strips to the marrow The Dirtbomb’s main conceit—that if a punk band strips everything down to drum and bass essentials, it means a whole different thing than when a funk or soul band does the same thing. I’ve pontificated for years on the glories of white-boy Northwestern garage band remakes of Motown or Stax hits—attempts which might seem misguided and awkward, yet end up laser-pointed into transcendent new directions. There’s no academic analysis in what The Dirtbombs do—they are as eager to get the crowd moving as were their funky forebears. They just have a different strategy, a different sense memory of the music, and aren’t afraid to impose it.

Lenny Kaye once described Malcolm McLaren’s culture-bridging album Duck Rock as “almost a theoretical work,” and I put the Dirtbombs diptych of Ultraglide in Black and Party Store on the same plateau.

The ultimate format for Party Store—a vinyl 12’’ three-disk set—is still a week away from release, as is the official CD release. But the songs came out on iTunes on Jan. 12, as if shoved angrily through the ether before they could be contained within a sleeve or jewel case. This is awe-striking ambient urban art of the highest, yet deepest underground order.