Get Right With God

Pittsburgh's Dirty Faces like to describe their music as "rickety rock," but that label doesn't quite stick when you listen to their second album, Get Right with God. These songs are the sonic equivalent of an old house covered with peeling paint and shingles falling from the roof, but once you get inside and stomp the floorboards a few times, you realize the place is a lot more solid than it looks. Like that house, Dirty Faces have built this disc from time-tested materials — dirty blues, hillbilly soul, stripped-down hard rock, and the kind of punk rock that's been around for a few decades and isn't going anywhere. Put all that together with some tenpenny nails and you have Get Right with God: vocalist T. Glitter howling like Greg Dulli on 20 cups of coffee, Leadfoot Powers and Easy "Tweekit" Powers lashing out thick and muscular guitar figures, Tricky Powers sinking ominous subsonic basslines under it all, Bloody H. Powers adding some rough but satisfying keyboard textures, and Sweet Willie "Five Fingers" Powers behind the drums, driving like a Peterbilt on the fast numbers and trotting slow but steady when the tempos wind down. Get Right with God is messed-up rock & roll American style, ragged but right, and while their wall of shambling noise might make you think this is music ready to fall apart, let the grooves sink in and you'll know Dirty Faces can withstand a Category Five hurricane when they start to play.