We Have You Surrounded

To be honest I wasn't as into this one as the other Dirtbombs records. There are some great tracks - the spectacular opening tune, 2, 5, 6 - but there's also a lot of filler or really half-baked songs. Songs 10-12 in particular are hard to get through, which is a shame for a band that released one of the tightest, yet more experimental records in the last 10 years ("Ultraglide in Black"). So, pick and choose on this one.

One of the best bands to ever hail from Detroit Michigan. Great live shows. Great new album. Love the song Indivisible. Just cool. Very Detroit. Spirit of Detroit type thing. Always able to get back up and keep swinging. Buy this album.

The Dirtbombs haven't necessarily out did themselves but they sure do have one amazing album here with "We have you surrounded." The Way they have broken from their normal lyrical content of love, wanting love and automotive-based topics is really refreshing for this long time Dirtbombs fan. The social, political and economic aspects of this genuinely feel good album are just an amazing addition to the other dirtbombs tunes. I can’t picture people not catching Dirtbomb fever from this album. Every song on this album rocks. This album leaves not a dull moment in the recording. I agree with the guy who said that "this is the most Detroit sounding Dirtbombs album yet." Most bands first album is full of angst but this is the Dirtbombs but this is like the Dirtbombs 5th or 6th album and maybe their Best to date. If you have ever taken a chance and purchased an album from a band you werent really familar with You should take a chance on the Dirtbombs album "We have you surrounded".

I'm new to the Dirtbombs, but not their sound, they cover a lot of ground with this mix. From punk, new wave and gararge to 50's and Spector-esqe songs they just plain rock.Well produced, but not over produced, this is the kind of album that makes me remember why I love Rock 'n Roll. And the saxophone is awesome! Just buy it and play it loud!

I caught the Dirtbombs live a couple times in their Ultraglide period, back around 2000, 2001, and they were a riot, a massively upbeat and screwed-up briliant mess of garage, punk, funk, trash & thrash. People were dancing on the ceiling and fighting in the pit. Big, BIG fun. Boy is it nice to hear them still rocking in 2008. Now they're channeling primordial Iggy and maybe a bit of early Clash and a nod at the Diamond Dogs end-of-empire feel, and still rocking raw and hard. Check out the 3-song hat trick that starts with the humpy Stooges homages "Wreck" and "Leopardman" and then goes big-chord Clashy anthem with "Fire." Also love the Velvets-y "Sherlock" and "La fin du Monde." Rock on, Mick.

In their previous albums, the Dirtbombs drew from Detroit’s dual soul and rock n’ roll legacies, creating a sweet yet dirty sound that was a celebration of the Motor City’s musical history. On their latest, We Have You Surrounded, the inspiration isn’t the Hitsville, Detroit of the past, but a Detroit in its eleventh hour, before the last building gets boarded up, the power goes out and the crazies take over. Frontman Mick Collins has said that every Dirtbombs LP is a concept album, and WHYS is no exception; it is a dark collection of apocalyptic tales from the rustbelt. Witness his straight-from-the-grave Dracula drawl on the goth-tinged opening track, “It’s Not Fun Until They See You Cry” (the eeriest Dirtbombs song for it’s title alone) or how he spews paranoid lyrics in a rap-like delivery over a mindless dance beat on “Wreck My Flow”. Meanwhile, “Leopardman at C & A”, taking its lyrics from a comic by V for Vendetta author Alan Moore, predicts, and almost embraces, a primeval return amidst the urban jungle ruins of the 21st century. The album ends with the full fury of the double drum, double bass, and guitar formation of the Dirtbombs being unleashed in an eight-minute long haunted house spook-out. But the end of the world isn’t devoid of Collins’s signature sense of humor (the ode to the Marie Antoinette of the end of the world in “Pretty Princess Day”), or his sense of romance. In “Ever Lovin Man”, he’s pleading for a requited love (“as the darkness melts around us/ I’m gonna take a stand/ shine the light of love/ and be your ever lovin man”) in what is the most soulful jam on the record. The end of the world may be nigh, but if the Dirtbombs have their way, we’ll be dancing through it.