Seeing the name Dirtnap Records on the back cover of an album means the contents most likely fit this description: jumped-up punk rock rhythms, singalong power pop hooks, wire-sharp guitars and crashing drums, vocals that sound like they're being extracted almost against the will of the singer. Not everything they do fits that bill, but
Low Culture's second album,
Places to Hide, certainly does. The band is made up of guys who played in bands like
the Marked Men and
Shang-A-Lang, and they sound like they were built to be on Dirtnap. Their first album hit all the marks; this one does too. Songs hurtle by in a rush of blown-out vocals, slashing guitars, smashed cymbals, and punk-pop (not pop-punk) energy. Taken in one sitting, the feeling is like being thrown into a wind tunnel, but when you take a step back, the individual songs start to stand out a little bit. There are some solid-gold hooks scattered throughout the high-rpm noise; the romping "Slave to You" sounds like a lo-fi
Royal Headache, "Hate Me When I Go" dials the tempo back a bit to reveal the kind of sad melody Greg Cartwright has made a living from for years, and "Shake It Off" ends the album with some minor-key swagger that sounds like it could have come from
the Damned's catalog. Even if the album couldn't be broken down into small nuggets of spiky pop goodness, the overall blast of electricity it delivers is hard to ignore. Like anything on Dirtnap, basically.
Low Culture may not be the best band the label ever discovered, but as
Places to Hide shows, they may be the most prototypical one, and that makes them pretty hard to beat in the punk rock excitement stakes. ~ Tim Sendra