AERIAL SALAD
DIRT MALL
8.5/10
Manchurian Punk trio Aerial Salad drop their second full-length release, the Tesco express explosion of ‘Dirt Mall’. The chin-up chest out tone is set from kick-off with a motoring ‘Virtues’ which nonchalantly swaggers into view, gazelles at ten to two laying a perfect 2020 isolation anthem at the feet of legends past. The guitars kickstart some quality tubthumping before the untipped vocals stretch already hoarse chords. Next up is the Britpop bastard of ‘Romance’, think a severely pissed off Oasis being held in some disused barn and being forced to cover Nirvana, at gunpoint.
‘Fever Dream’ continues the festival tent filling sounds while ‘Temp’ is unapologetically torn apart like racecourse hooligans smashing it at the Guinness bar. The album whizzes by in a stolen wheel-spinning haze of influences and rather than cherry-picking the best of each genre Aerial Salad have simply plumped for the ones with the most attitude. The ‘My Cherona’ bass line on ‘Such A Pity’ is married with a Green Day-Esque twist of a chorus that creeps up on you while your busy working out where you know the tune from. A raspy ‘State O’Yer’ punches you square between the eyes before the title track ‘Dirt Mall’ is echoed around the musical tower block. Sometimes the obvious chords are the greatest and ‘Dirt Mall’ is loaded with them and Aerial Salad indiscriminately sprays ‘em without warning. The hunched over, back street Madchester nightmare of ‘Lazy’ is just shamelessly grandiose. The albums final cut ‘Stressed’ has a borrowed ‘going out with’ riff paired with a stop-start, swirl-inducing chorus and that’s that. Aerial Salad has released a full-length smash and grab holy motherfucker of an album. Buy it, borrow it or steal but just get it.
Dirt Mall is out on Friday 27th March to buy direct go to https://wonkunit.com/aerial-salad/