When you think about it, there is nothing really all too complex about The Burning Dirty Band. A quick glance at their website shows they are nothing more than your everyday 4-piece rock band with the obligatory guitar/keys/bass/drums setup. 17 Year Sun, their sophomore effort, has absolutely no flashy studio trickery on it; every beat and melody is molded from the natural sounds of their instruments and voices. The album shares the same feel as four dudes jamming together in a tiny garage, complete with the faint smell of gasoline in the air and a broken down Monte Carlo taking up most of the extra space. Their sound is very straightforward, quite simplistic and easy to comprehend. The Burning Dirty Band is what it is, and that’s all that there is, so why does this album make me feel that there is much more to it than this? The answer is discovered in two words: raw emotion.
Whether it’s the bittersweet lyrics of “Letter to Kate” and “Nailed down,” the ultra catchiness of “How Our Castle Fell” and “Girls Are Fun,” or the musical digressions on “Worms” and “17 Year Sun;” every moment on this album exudes a level of passionate grit that interweaves itself into every track. This is the signature mark of The Burning Dirty Band, playing hard and giving themselves to their music, thus forcing 17 Year Sun from ordinary and bland to extraordinary and complex. It
