Dirty Children

Dirty Children lead singer Nadia Fay sounds a lot like Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. From the frequent yelps to the same breathy grunts and lyrical enunciation, it’s almost impossible to not hear the similarities between the two. Even their slower material owes the same kind of debt, if purely by similarities in vocal performance, to the Pretenders. But Yeah Yeah Yeahs fanatics hold up; the voice may be uncanny, but Fay’s lyrics wallow in poor-me/religion sucks pseudo "dark” grade school poetry, rarely giving the music a chance. And what about that music? It’s more fleshed out than their NY counterparts — to be sure — but without the dynamic energy, memorable riffs or emotional heft. Shut Off the World is a confident record, one from a band who clearly know what kind of music they want to make; it’s just too bad that so much of it is riddled with incredibly poor lyrics and "sounds like” comparisons to artists who’ve been there before, and who’ve done it better.