AJJ's 'Dirty Old Power' Is a Furious, Funny Masterpiece of Hoping on Purpose
AJJ have been fighting this fight a long time, and Dirty Old Power finds them doing something harder than complaining. Paste’s Casey Epstein-Gross frames the record exactly right: the Arizona band “has always fought for hope in a hopeless world, but now, on their ninth record, Dirty Old Power, they’ve moved beyond the concept itself and begun the Sisyphean search for some language to define it—or, barring that, to create their own.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The band is self-released on their own AJJ Unlimited imprint, and spent the money on John Congleton, who produced and recorded the album at Animal Rites in Los Angeles. It’s a reunion: per Paste, Dirty Old Power “reunites the band with John Congleton, who produced 2014’s Christmas Island and 2016’s The Bible 2.” Paste also notes the earlier records were cut in Dallas “before John moved to Los Angeles,” which makes this the first of the three made on his new ground.
The Spatial Dynamics: Congleton’s instinct has always been to make a small band sound dangerous rather than tidy, and across twelve tracks — “Beauty and Truth 2,” “Update,” “Phlamethrower,” “Hungry House,” “Wasted on a Boeing,” “Human Centipede” among them — the arrangements keep finding more room than a folk-punk record usually allows itself.
Standout Performance
Sean Bonnette, whose particular gift is singing an unbearable line so plainly that you laugh before you flinch. The titles do half the work — “Phlamethrower,” “Wasted on a Boeing,” “Human Centipede” — and then the songs turn out to mean every word.
Why It’s Certified
Because the subject is enormous and the band refuses to get solemn about it. Paste singles out “Florid Language” and “Update” as the places where the record works through artificial intelligence, human connection and empathy, and that trio of concerns could have produced a lecture. Instead it produced an AJJ album: twelve songs, no filler, and a title track that treats power as something old and dirty rather than new and frightening. Nine records deep, that isn’t stubbornness. It’s a practice.