Dirty Epics: One Way Mirror

Leaving five years between your debut album and its follow-up may seem like a high-risk strategy. For Dublin outfit Dirty Epics, however, the intervening time has clearly been well spent, including gigging around Europe and across the US, as well as providing songs for various TV and film shows. They’ve honed their sound, too, into a formidable, controlled sonic assault, while the songwriting carries the mark of a band who’ve got what it takes to scale the heights. There certainly isn’t much excess baggage on the 10 tunes on One Way Mirror, produced by Declan Gaffney, who has worked with U2 (No Line On The Horizon) and Matt Paul (Amy Winehouse and Hot Chip).

A deep, pulsating bassline and a metronomic drumbeat heralds the opener ‘Under The Knife’ with Sarah Jane Wai’s urgent vocals arriving even before the chiming guitars; ‘Electric Ballroom’ boasts almost Edge-like guitar crunches, while a jerky beat and clipped guitars underpin ‘Light’.
Much has been made of their so-called ‘punk’ credentials and while Sarah Jane’s vocal style recalls everyone from Siouxsie Sioux and Hazel O’Connor to Patti Smith, and even Rachel Sweet, the ‘Epics sound is very strongly rooted in the post-punk era of the angular guitars and the symmetrical rhythms of bands like Talking Heads and Gang Of Four. This is especially evident on the spiky, taut textures on ‘Grey Matter’, the superb current single ‘Midnight Missing’ and the terrific adrenalin rush that is ‘Beautiful Mistake’. It’s only on the closing track, ‘Surrender’ – a tender-ish ballad in a Blur/Radiohead vein – that they turn things down a notch. One Way Mirror is a scorcher.