Girls on Grass are actually only 50% girls but they are indeed smokin’. “Dirty Power” is the Brooklyn band’s second album – their self-titled debut having been released in 2015 with a slightly different lineup. The four-piece features songwriter Barbara Endes on lead vocals and guitar, drummer Nancy Polstein, and “two guys named Dave” (Mandl on bass and on Weiss guitar).
Girls on Grass deliver a sound that combines country surf rock with indie pop. Think Boston’s Dumptruck meets The Smithereens with Southern Culture on The Skids, after the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray has a fistfight with Lucinda Williams.
“Dirty Power” features eleven tracks, two of which are instrumental, and deals with themes of love, politics and the grind of 21st-century life. Opener “Down At The Bottom” with its video shot in Coney Island gives the middle finger to the NYC A-type personality with Endes evincing us to come hang out with the “losers” instead. “Commander in Thief” is an ode to the current POTUS, swaggering along with pointed guitars and equally pointed lyrics sung in the first person – “I’m gonna take you down with me/the regular rules don’t apply/I come from superior genes/we’re all in this for the money.”
Endes has a way with lyrics that tell a great story with a fuck-you attitude and a side-order of humor. “Street Fight” describes jostling for position in traffic, which we can all relate to, with a “get out of my damn way” all-or-nothing mission; the jangle country rock of “Got to Laugh to Keep from Crying” opens with the line “who played who?” and continues with “left my man for a woman who looks like Aimee Mann.” Whoever the man was, he got owned, and Endes lets you know it.
Despite being lyrically strong, the album doesn’t suffer from the instrumental tracks as being mere afterthoughts. “Two Places At Once” cleverly pans dueling electric guitars left and right as if Duane Eddy took the Devil down to Georgia, while “Asenio” simply offers to take us surfing.
To bring “Dirty Power” to life, Girls on Grass pulled out all the stops and assembled a top-flight recording team. It was recorded at Greenpoint’s fabulous Cowboy Technical Services and produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (the Del-Lords, Roscoe’s Gang). Ambel has worked with everyone from the Bottle Rockets to Steve Earle to Run-DMC. The album was engineered by Mario Viele (Squirrel Nut Zippers, Ollabelle, Los Lobos) and mixed by Michael James (Hole, L7, Reverend Horton Heat). Grammy-winning mastering engineer David Donnelly, whose washing-list of credits include Chicago and Aerosmith, added the final polish. The end-result is that “Dirty Power” does justice to the band, their playing and their songs, delivering a fine album that should equally appeal to college radio and country rock audiences.
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