The Diemakers

Detroit Recordings

Independent Release, 2013

You can tell The Diemakers are from Detroit without reading their bio. They’re greasy, dirty and unsteady on their feet. Their music is anyways.  And clearly bad for you because of how much fun it is. Like original Lucky Strikes, they only come in one flavor, and unfiltered, so get used to it and deal. This is no frills garage rock and if you want a memorable ride, baby. You’ll hitch yourself to this wagon for a while and find out if you have what it takes to hang.

Detroit’s best rock bands have always been raw and rough around the edges.  There’s a real seat of the pants to many of the recordings as they shift manically in tempo. “Way,” sidles back and forth from second to fourth gear.

“Keep Running”  is a great driven stomp that could’ve come from The Kinks, or The Yardbirds, but it’s a bit of fuzzed out bliss that bites and tears with each crashing beat propelling the damn thing forward.  Part of what makes “Things” a great song is the feeling the whole thing is about to fall apart at any second, and they manage to keep the song on track. When it does unravel it almost feels like relief.  “Gotta Go” gives Dominic Harris the opportunity to play some gritty slide over top of a thumping call to beat feet.

The music is simple and unrelenting.  Uncluttered by ego’s or unecassary production, there’s an unrefined pomp to its brilliance.  They could polish these songs and distill them into something else, but then it’d lose all sense of urgency. It’s burning need to share these songs as is which sets them apart from similar three chord constructs. The Diemakers could spend more money and time on production and rehearsal, and I think it’d be a damn shame.