Hallelujah Sirens, a record that begins with things that won’t last-- a rising sun, a couple in a car, love-- gets to its close in a hurry: By the second track, the sun has set, the trip has ended, and the narrator’s alone. Later, the girl who looked beautiful in her summer dress will leave; at night, they’ll fight some more, and she’ll leave again; they’ll both take long drives and feel lousy and nostalgic under the stars but euphoric when the sun rises again.
Dirty on Purpose create their moments out of little contradictions, in which hearts break to “Shiny Happy People” and the builds end up with guest vocalist Jaymay doing “Heart of Glass” instead of “Cattle and Cane”-- these things help them. Were they happy, they’d be insufferable; were they always as dark as the roads they travel, they wouldn’t have the will to make it through even one song. Their daytime-nighttime, on-off cycles sustain neither highs nor lows: They are as giddy and occasionally deadening as their subject matter.
“Marfa Lights”, the best song on Hallelujah Sirens, is about flickering, colorful ghost lights in Texas, proved by skeptics to be generic automobile taillights from the nearby U.S. 67. In the song, the four bandmates chase the mystery lights off course and into the cold desert, while the guitars move from slow-motion delay to a grindingly bright, headlong four chords. On their other “light” song, single “Light Pollution”, they head out of town yet again but don’t get anywhere. The worst track here, they take the thinnest build you could find-- somebody banging on a snare-drum, basically-- and issue commands (“Take the long way home”) as if people wanted to be told what to do that late in the evening.
It’s worth nothing that Dirty on Purpose come from Brooklyn, a place not known for appreciating a straightforward, genuine narrative or unadulterated hook-- where, for instance, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were able to assassinate their ironclad brand with a few acoustic guitar strums and a little harmony. You’d never know from all the talk of seasons and driving that Dirty on Purpose live in a city with little of either. One song, “Car No Driver”, starts like Jawbreaker’s “Kiss the Bottle” (another song about love getting ruined at nighttime and then getting the fuck out of town by the morning), then makes all the driving into a metaphor for growing up and not quite knowing what you’re about. You break down, the car breaks down: It’s the most, er, Williamsburg moment on Sirens-- feeling young and passed-by.
But that’s not the story here (except, maybe, only the young-and-passed-by get this melodramatic when the clock strikes 4 a.m. in Texas). Blurry, constantly in motion, Dirty on Purpose look to make sense of whatever drama that can be found in between coming down in the morning and waking up to it.
