Dinero’s first album, Sheep, is so shit hot I had to wear oven mitts when I ejected it from the stereo in my truck. You can tell within the first minute that these aren’t dorm room dudes playing in their first rock band but I didn’t just call them old, just experienced. It was hard to shift from second to third with the oven mitt on and so my back wheel spun out pretty good on some gravel and before long I was in a ditch in Laporte, Colorado. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are consequences in Dinero’s brand of rock’n’roll.
The holy ghost of D. Boon is all over Sheep but Dinero also conjures up some of the most haunted music of the deep south. I spent seven years living in the Mississippi hill country where the Burnside and Kimbrough clans have been hypnotizing crowds for generations. Some have accused the hill country greats of being repetitive but it’s something way more primal and somehow Dinero has captured that same flex. Sheep is an album, an album that rarely takes the concrete block off the accelerator. It’s unfair to call Sheep raw, raw would be too simple. There’s next to no polish and each hit of a drum feels like a punch to the gut-the kind you saw coming but couldn’t do anything about.
I love this record and if I haven’t convinced you that Sheep is Essential Listening then soak up the first lines of Dinero’s about me: “Dinero is Spanish for money. Money is American for power. We have little of either, but we’ve got plenty to say about it. Blessed with brains too big in skulls too thick…”
Dinero – Concealed Weapons And Open Containers
Dinero – Daddy’s Money
Dinero – Some People Push Back
