June 20, 2006

Dirty Lenin

Dirty Lenin Hurt My Face
By Justin Quinn Pelegano

I’ll be the first to admit, and not without a little pride, that I’m a son of grunge daddies Cobain and Vedder. If you had seen me in high school and college...hand me any music that rang of suffering and “fuck you” and the next second I was blasting it in my headphones at levels hard enough to block out NYC street noise. Or my teachers. Loud enough to block out my parents. And even my unrequited love fixations. Call me a downer, a depressive, cynical, or even completely sane. I can take it. Something about the unadorned and unapologetic “truth” in songs like Nothing Man and Rape Me appealed to my pissed off and super bored soul. Because, after all, I got it. The rest of all y’all were phonies.

Then, well, you know; I grew up and realized that life needn’t always revolve around the dark side…or me…comfortable as all that was. And wow! A major side benefit to finding the light (or was that absurdity) in life was a more eclectic music collection. It took me a while to be cool with that. “Um, dudes, is it okay to sing along to The Flaming Lips?” Honestly, it was a watershed moment when I allowed myself to smile at happier musical fare while out in public. Like the time they played Mmm Bop in Tower Records. The moral is that I was easing up in my old age. And good thing too. Because there’s no way in hell the younger, baggy pants me would have sat through one riff from Dirty Lenin. And that’s a damn shame. It might have changed the course of my life. Or at the very least made people wanna hang with me more. Nobody likes a mope. Anyway, better late than never.

I dare anybody, even the gothies, to listen to Dirty Lenin’s tunes and not have a good time. I dare you, I bet you, and if I’m wrong…well, then you’re a robot, simple as that. Leave your troubles at the door people, and come meet the sauciest band in town.

Okay fine, yes, they tour in a minivan (a.k.a., suburban prison on wheels), their music calls upon a less-than-rock-out saxophone and tremendously prominent keyboard, and the only band member in this coed foursome who wears ass-huggingly tight pants at live gigs is the six-foot-plus bassist named Jim. On paper it sounds anything but jammin’. But stay with me on this one.

It works like this: Dirty Lenin is fun. And there isn’t anything wrong with the f-word. Fun is watching DL’s lovely ladies – Tate and Renee – command center stage while the boys content themselves with back-up beats. Progressive is in. And it well serves their live shows. There’s absolutely no use trying to duck the XX energy. And why in the whole wide world would you want to? That’s right, the girls play real hard like; hard and fast and sweaty. They even smile when they do it so that we may smile when we witness. And it works. Privy to a recent Knitting Factory gig, I grinned through the entire set like the Cheshire Cat on uppers. Grinned ‘til my face hurt. Even when the sax made its inevitable appearance. Still smiling.

No, Dirty Lenin isn’t a gimmick band (not anymore; not since they ditched the whole former-Soviet stage banter thing). And you’re not gonna find them caught in trite scenarios of self-mockery. No, they’re dedicated to the music, and I don’t want to give the impression otherwise. I’ve heard their tunes called alterna-pop, Berlin-esque, witty, sexy – I’ll call them a tightly packed jolt to the jaded. DL’s newly released album 2% Faster may go heavy on thinly veiled sexual metaphor (“I want your sugar, baby”) and silly lyrical musings (“Our love is like the USSR, it just don’t exist anymore”), but when you find yourself bouncing along the streets instead of trudging through them, something is going very right in your ears. And that’s evidence to the musical prowess at the heart of each track. So don’t let the PopRocks on your tongue party fool ya. This group knows how to write a hook. Couple that with their let-loose attitude, and you’ve got a band that makes rising and shining seem a little less daunting than before.

For more information on Dirty Lenin, including tour dates, check out www.dirtylenin.com

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