.png)
By Gannopy Urena
2 min read
I saw the Dirty Babies Club on yet another Tourist Trap poster for a show that I couldn’t make it to because I was scheduled to work. I gotta start skipping my shifts, as I’m missing out on a lot of good shit (hey boss, if you’re reading this I’m kidding!)
Dirty Babies Club is a good old Allston Rock band that I found out about near a Pavement, which made me feel like a lifelong Boston resident even though I’m yet another person who moved here for college and decided to stay here after graduation because I had nowhere else to move to. The band has 184 followers on Instagram.
They don’t have a Spotify (good for you, fuck the man that pays fractions of pennies per stream) but they do have a Bandcamp. They released their first E.P., “demo ‘21” in July, and have already played at a bunch of classic Allston venues since then, like O’Briens Pub, the Tourist Trap, and Trixie’s Palace. I’m friends with people in a couple of bands and I think it took them longer than a few months to play a single show outside of their own basement.
I think that listening to the Dirty Babies Club would instantly transport me back to the 1970s if I were alive at the time. I absolutely adore the early punk rock sound, and these dudes have it. They really make all my dreams about reincarnating the Sex Pistols and Black Flag come true. I hope none of the band members are anything like Sid Vicious.
Their latest EP, “more demos 21,” released November 5, has four tracks, and it’s really hard for me to pick a favorite. The songs are unusually short for rock. The longest track is two and a half minutes long. Instead of feeling incomplete, it’s like the band eliminated all the dead space of a song and just left the best parts.
The lead singer sounds a lot like Dick Lucas with a hint of Julian Casablancas and can perform those incredibly gritty yelling vocals. The drums are strong, the guitar work is great; I really have no notes.
If I had to pick a favorite song off of this E.P., I think that it would be “Everybody Hates You” because of the sick guitar work that especially shines in the middle of the song.
What I love so much about 70’s punk rock is the rough, nothing-held-back, rebellious energy that is pervasive throughout the genre, and the Dirty Babies Club definitely captures that.
*Originally published in-print in Boston Compass Newspaper #141 December 2021