The Lash

Since busting out of Dundas, Ontario, in the late 2000s, The Dirty Nil has never wavered in their mission to hit all of your favorite rock ’n’ roll pleasure points—grungy noise, punky energy, power-pop hooks—all at once. However, “Rock N’ Roll Band”—a Weezer-esque highlight from their fifth album, *The Lash*—is less a celebration of their chosen vocation than a cautionary tale of dedicating your life to criss-crossing the continent in a beat-up van for poverty wages while “all your loved ones are worried sick” and “someone else is getting rich, not you.” That sobering perspective permeates *The Lash*: While the album hardly skimps on the in-the-red riffs and shout-it-out choruses on which the Nil built their brand (check the pop-punk piledriver “Do You Want Me?”), there’s less of an audible smirk in Luke Bentham’s delivery, lending the self-defeatist anthem “Fail in Time” and jangly “Spider Dream” a palpable sense of melancholy. And never before have we heard him sound as naked and vulnerable as on “This Is Me Warning Ya,” a haunting mid-album ballad that replaces the Nil’s power-trio roar with minimalist guitar lines and foreboding strings.

Crack that whip! Hamilton, Ontario’s rowdiest sons The Dirty Nil return revitalised on fifth album, The Lash