Magic Dirt
The Zoo, Fortitude Valley

Magic Dirt, one of Australian rock & roll’s most tireless workhorses, have, throughout their career, had their feet planted in two camps – singalong rock-pop and grinding, brilliant bombastic sludge. Their latest spate of songs falls mostly into the latter, thankfully, because the evil shit is what they do best. This new set, appearing on their independently released mini-album, Beast, sees the Dirt return to form – and by form, I mean heavy, seductive, frightening and NOISY. ‘Don’t Panic’ is such a track, and a standout tonight. Adalita’s sultry spoken-word verse is punctured by a noise-ridden stab of a chorus. It’s a song that wouldn't be out of place on, say, 1998’s Young and Full of the Devil.

The current, rollicking single, ‘Bring Me the Head Of…’ perhaps offers the only (slight) reprieve to fans of ‘Dirty Jeans’, but one gets the sense that this is a band producing and playing music for themselves at the moment. Beast itself is an absolute middle finger to the world of major label slavery, as is its sister release, Roky’s Room, a wordless noisefest that is represented here in a series of bridging, chunky soundscapes, filled with piercing, Stooges-esque wah-wah and doom-ridden Sonic Youth squall.

This is a band with a wide-ranging commercial audience – you have to admire their gall. They’ve gained this audience with slickly produced numbers like ‘Plastic Loveless Letter’ and ‘Watch Out Boys’, and although these songs, performed live, sound bigger and badder than their recorded versions, it’s still an unconvincing act- their noisier cousins fit this band like a glove, and they do it better than anyone else in the country. Magic Dirt’s grinning ear-to-ear tonight, and fair enough, too. They sound natural, crafty and confident with this new, yet familiar material behind them. Why bother with appealing to the great unwashed? Welcome back, our Geelong noiseniks.

by Jo Nilson