Another release it’s taken over two months for me to get around to reviewing is Dirty Ol’ Crow’s ‘Strangers’ Nest’ EP, which was actually released back in March and given a PR push in October / November.
Dirty Ol’ Crow trade in that blues-based hard-rock you’d probably expect from a band called Dirty Ol’ Crow. That means there are some chunky riffs and epic solos as the band explore well-worn but equally classic themes of women and booze – admittedly, mostly women, not least of all on ‘Mistress of Sin’ and ‘Sex Dictator’. The sleaze is amped up to 11, of course. That’s when it’s being subtle: ‘Daddy’s little girl / spready your legs open wide / for my token fun I’m gonna make her mine’, Vikki Totten sneers on the latter of the two, which was also their debut single.
I’d like to think they’re being ironic and perhaps they are, but if so, we’re in the realms of 21st-century straight-faced irony.
There are heavy hints of Guns n’ Roses and Motley Crüe and all of the hard drinkin’, hard-lovin’ hair rock here, there, and everywhere, and there’s nothing here that’s by any means new. But Dirty Ol’ Crow do display a real energy that means they stand out in their field.
