There’s something really cool going on in Nashville right now: A guitar-rock revival of sorts, one that celebrates the six-string in all its glory, from Southern-fried blues and garage to 90s alt heroes. Leading the charge is JEFF The Brotherhood and their Orrall-family-run label, Infinity Cat, which has put out some of the most criminally overlooked records of the past two years, like the 50s-tinged punk of Heavy Cream’s Danny or the crunchy, shwasted blues of Natural Child’s self-titled EP and debut record, 1971. Diarrhea Planet have been kicking around Nashville for a few years now, dropping their debut EP Aloha! on Evil Weevil Records, before signing to Infinity Cat this summer, who released the fantastic Yama-uba 7” in July and now their first LP, Loose Jewels.
Diarrhea Planet run on a level of energy and sheer excitement that feels too rare these days. This is a band comprised of four guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer, and frontman Hodan Dickie’s vocals fall somewhere between just intelligible enough and appropriately garbled. This is a band that eats, sleeps, and breathes their motto “Shred till you’re dead, or go to hell,” and one that closes its live sets with fan-favorite sing-along, “Ghost With A Boner” (from Aloha!). Loose Jewels, all eighteen minutes and forty-two seconds of it, is a superb display of bare-bones, balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n’ roll; an exhibition in form, appreciation, and love for the music, as much as it’s also the product of six bros who, after delivering pizzas all day, want nothing more than to guzzle cheap beer and rock out after they punch the clock.
Throughout the record the guitars wail — solos piled on top of riffs piled on top of hooks piled on top of an impenetrable base of chugging power chords and spot-on drumming. The most discernable lyrics are chants of, or at least sound like, “I don’t want it to go!” (“Ice Age”), or “Can you give me one more cigarette?!” (“Cigarettes”), or “Street rat!” (which I think is what they’re shouting on “Warm Ridin’,” though I don’t think it matters either way). Fits of laughter or ecstatic whoops and hollers from band members often accent the end of songs or come out in the throes of an especially punishing shred session — the only logical reaction really when you’re blasting through fret-board scorchers like “Your Head” or “My Dubs.”
But all of that that would mean squat if Diarrhea Planet weren’t such fantastic songwriters. Built on solid gold pop melodies, the band then strips away the excesses of hair metal and injects those nuggets of nuanced guitar fury into the economized structure of punk. Even though DP jam-pack songs like “Raft Nasty” or “Juggernaut!” with dueling guitars and vocal hooks, it never feels overwrought or –bearing; and at the same time, you can’t really believe no one’s done anything quite like it either. The studio polish of Loose Jewels underlines all of this—Diarrhea Planet have committed themselves completely to an aesthetic renders them completely exposed: Yeah, there’s distortion, but the fuzz only serves to bolster the instruments, never bury them. And, man, do they just own it, assured that each and every riff deserves to ring out.
Loose Jewels does end with a rallying cry as well: “We were born to lose / Well, baby, we still do. / Cause there’s so much fucking shit / To deal with / And I quit. / So give me another beer / We’re gonna drink until the sun comes up / Or at least till there’s no beer. / And I believe God will find us / And forgive us / For these stupid things…” the entire band bellows on “Fauser.” And it’s not as if they’re suddenly revealing a hidden layer of apathy or resigned indifference; Diarrhea Planet are too life-affirming for that — I mean the record opens with the declaration, “Long live Diarrhea Planet, and long live everyone I know!” Loose Jewels, rather, is a record that asks you to take stock of your life, to remind yourself that through all the B.S. and misery and setbacks you’ll always have cold beer and good friends. Not to mention, I can’t remember the last time a rock song, let alone a freaking fret-tapping, caused me to crack such a big smile.
