Cassette Review: Dirt Friends "Sunsets & Night Sweats" (Baby Tooth)

[$7 // Edition of 100 // https://babytoothtucson.bandcamp.com/album/sunsets-night-sweats]

At first, I thought Dirt Friends has this indie pop rock sound.   I heard pieces of a band like Foster The People in here- and I don't just mean that one song they had on the radio, but on the whole because you really should hear that whole FTP album to understand what they're about.    But as this cassette goes on we find layers to it which take away the idea that it is indie pop rock, though that might be where it is found in your local record store just for convenience.

Guitar-driven rock, these songs are on the light side as they feel like we're floating around on Cloud 9 rather than being heavy or angry or anything like that.   They can kick in and get heavy in their own way, but not in a metal way.   As modern as this can sound at times (because it puts me in a radio place with Foster The People, Kings of Leon and even The Killers at times) it has a classic rock feel to it, but more of a 1980's time with bits of Tom Petty and The Police.

If you wanted to think of this as being a combination of Foster The People and The Police- musically- you wouldn't be too far off.    However, the sound those two forces come together to create on "Sunsets & Night Sweats" is likely above and beyond what you would imagine.    But the lyrics are also something you should be paying attention to, even if you can't immediately sing along with them.   (Don't rush it, you'll get there)

On Side A there is this song which says "She's not afraid of ghosts no more... except for me" and it just gives you this general idea of what the lyrics are about overall.    They're not the normal type of lyrics you'd expect to hear from a rock band and yet they also are not quite as far out there as some of the other lyrics I've heard before, which definitely makes them nice because people won't be put off by them nor have they likely heard anything like them before.

When it comes to cassettes of a rock nature, I can usually set a time or place that is best to listen to them.   But this is as much late night driving music as it could be beach day music.   It might get a bit too serious at some points for beach fun ("Is it a fist fight if you don't swing back?") and yet somehow I can still see it being applied there in the broader sense.   Perhaps that is the best quality of the rock of Dirt Friends though- there is no bad time or place to listen to this cassette.