Died Pretty
Free Dirt

There was a moment when Australian rock saved our lives. Put that way, it sounds like a massive bullshit. And yet...

It was the mid-eighties, and we didn’t know which way to turn. Post-punk was dead, Saint Patti had stopped making records, everyone in New York was doing it, the Paisley Underground was the infatuation of just one summer. Only synthetic sounds were coming from the land of Albion. But where was our dose of rock’n’roll? I really don’t know who had the idea to see what was happening on the other side of the globe. Could it be that in the land of kangaroos someone remembered the immense Radio Birdman? Yes, they remembered them. Celibate Rifles, Hoodoo Gurus, Stems, New Christs, the first names that come to mind. All devoted, indeed, to rock’n’roll. The real thing. Made of basements, beer cans, battered convertibles at 160 per hour cutting through sunlit highways.

And again: Died Pretty. They come out with two extended plays that make you shout a miracle, "Out Of The Unknown", with a "Mirror Blues" that in ten minutes sums up everything, from Velvet to Television, and "Next To Nothing", where the fury softens into unsurpassable slow tracks, "Ambergris" and "Final Twist", among the best we've ever heard.

Then the first full-length, "Free Dirt", produced by Rob Younger, which we immediately recognize by the cover: a skyline while the storm is coming, and which perfectly depicts the content: songs that start soft to overwhelm us in lysergic rides.

Died Pretty play unadorned rock, the kind we imagine is in paradise. They have chewed up all the best, Dylan and Young, the Velvet and the Elevators. They spit it out in the form of ballads with majestic crescendos, tinged with psychedelia and desert moods. A singer five feet tall, Ronald S. Peno, with the charisma of a shaman, sometimes gentle, sometimes irate, but always inspired. A liquid organ, reminding us of the best Manzarek. A guitarist who seems narcoleptic and then unleashes distorted and devastating solos. A rhythm section with a rounded bass, the kind that creates lines that get inside you forever. And the ability to write songs as if they were kissed on the mouth by Euterpe.

"Free Dirt" doesn’t have a weak moment. From the initial "Life To Go (Landsakes)", embellished by the beautiful piano of Louis Tillett, through the epic "Just Skin", with a furious solo by Brett Myers, ending with the flawless sixties western of "Through Another Door", Died Pretty reminded us back then what true rock is. Passion, malaise, straightforwardness.

“It’s just life, and you don’t understand.”

For M: you didn’t leave without ever hearing them, did you? Damn, you would have loved them...