It's a bad day when you step on gum left on the sidewalk, but it's worse when you step in a dog's mess or someone's vomit from the night before, hazards left behind by careless urbanites. These thoughtless people upend mega tubs of popcorn the moment they get into a movie theater and use the bathroom at work right before you having never, ever heard the term "courtesy flush." We're kept from confronting such inconsideration and general nastiness because we never know exactly who these despicable culprits are.
The Dirty Faces are these kind of people. They don't just skirt filth-rock cliché; they revel in it. The best moments on Get Right With God tread the line between keeping it simple and sounding stupid like they're doing pirouettes on a pommel horse. A shame that all those moments are at the beginning of the album: "Dead Man's Boots" is as close to a manifesto you'll hear from the band, dramatically strumming one chord over a brutally simple drum pattern while singer T. Glitter wails on about his daily routine ("I wake up, I go to work/ I work hard, 'cause I'm a jerk"), condemning everyone nearby, including himself. "Somnambulist's Vacation" isn't nearly as clever as the vocab-flashing title suggests, but it's a spirited and sloppy romp nonetheless, as is the syncopated thrashing and sin-glorification of "Sister Redux".
But as the pace lessens, their dependence on well-worn tropes becomes more apparent. The legato and bluesy "Like a Thief" is a serious lag in momentum, sounding like limp Make-Up (further reinforced by female counterpoint vocals). The same goes for the appropriately titled "Slow Train", though it's partly redeemed by some over-the-top vocal adlibs. Why they wanted to build an album around these interminable centerpieces, I'm not sure; it's far from the best they have to offer. "Rocky Bleier" is a spike in tempo with some Onieda-esque mono-note organ blurts, but that and "Push it... (Begin)" sound half as inspired sandwiched between the dual monoliths of dullness.
The two-chord pummeling of "Punkin Pie" is almost reckless enough to redeem the band, but the piano roll of "The War from Above" sounds like a tired genre exercise despite a few golden tossed-off lyrics ("History is written by the sinners/ And read by the listless beginners"). Dirty Faces don't update these moves, just make them sound as filthy as possible to sound as authentic as possible-- and that's not a bad start. Still, your response to Get Right With God will depend on your tolerance to established Stones-by-way-of-Stooges form, regardless of how decadent and inconsiderate Dirty Faces make it sound.
