As a musical landscape, Detroit is tangled up in mythology: the twitchy legacy of Motown, the ashes of The Stooges, the political caterwauling of John Sinclair and the screeching MC5, the piercing howls of a carnivorous, vine-swinging axman, and the recent commotion kicked up over a brother/sister duo and a loping white rapper. Fold in a handful of press-ready analogies about industry and grime, and a few prosaic portraits of clanging pistons, merciless winters, and honest, pink-faced Americans, and unleash the wordy enigma that is contemporary Detroit. Forced to sacrifice a viable cultural identity for series of one-dimensional, Upton Sinclair-meets-Norman Rockwell-meets-8 Mile clichés, it becomes impossible not to ask: Does Detroit even exist outside the pages of Mojo?
Chances are, The Dirtbombs hate that they've become just another notch in the greasy Motor City totem pole (check every White Stripes feature framed by a meaningless Dirtbombs sidebar), but Dirtbombs frontman Mick Collins has Detroit roots that can't be easily overlooked, or at least not anymore: former guitarist for late-80s garage beasts The Gories, Collins has recently been dragged into the very weirdest kind of posthumous regard, with sold-six-copies Gories records suddenly becoming elite status symbols for Detroit-crazed garage-rock revivalists. A crude, pubescent, magnificent mess, The Gories were both a reaction to and an embodiment of the city which spawned them; the band sucked up much-discussed local influences and then promptly spit them back out on the floor, each rock-soul-garage song a half-digested, unrecognizable, and entirely gross hometown homage.
Collins' mission with The Dirtbombs is not so different: Dangerous Magical Noise, the band's third full-length (and follow-up to 2001's soul covers record, Ultraglide in Black) quakes with the potential for total implosion, always threatening to completely dissemble itself and leave a tiny pile of gravel behind. That danger-- the menace of possible destruction, or of feeling like this record might never play again because it's just too fragile to hold up-- is also exactly what makes Dangerous Magical Noise so unabashedly glorious. Stubbornly lo-fi and expectedly scrappy, the album is also tremendously listenable, a rhythmic, leg-flailing romp through vintage soul cool, glam boogie, classic rock thrash, and punk bravado.
The Dirtbombs boast two drummers (and have recorded with two bass players), but even with all that thumping, the band's backing effort is barely enough to support Collins' wild guitar freakouts and billowing Henrdix-hollers. Opener "Start the Party" is as clear an introduction to raucous Detroit stomping as anyone's ever gonna offer, a fuzz-laden Kick Out the Jams promise that, while breeze-blowing powerful, doesn't readily admit to the band's capacity for subtle tinkering. The rollicking blues-rocker "F.I.D.O." belies The Dirtbombs' ability to craft emotionally complex, anthemic songs; "Motor City Baby" showcases the band's readiness to dip into the hooky, bubblegum choruses that made Motown wiggle.
There's not too much here to dismiss: "Stuck in Thee Garage" is ultimately forgettable (although its title is a nice implication of the Bombs' embrace of high/low dichotomy), but Dangerous Magical Noise plays better as one big, somersaulting explosion, aggressive and gentle and smarter every time you look. If The Dirtbombs are any indication of Detroit's real "scene," they're proving that the frantic archivists and smoking-jacket cognoscenti will never actually come to terms with the anti-poetry of this city. But if the lack of a realistic, cohesive music community means it's possible to create this kind of bizarrely assimilated beauty, then Detroit shouldn't even care.
