Chew on This: The Dirtbombs Go Bubblegum

Back in the eighties, there was a Detroit garage-punk band called the Gories. Led by the singer and guitarist Mick Collins, the group released three LPs (including the superb “Outta Here”) and a number of singles over a brisk half-decade. As the Gories wound down, Collins invented a side project called the Dirtbombs. The band’s original charter was, well, original: Collins wanted to release a series of singles in radically different styles. The execution expanded to album-length projects. The Dirtbombs’ début, “Horndog Fest,” was pop-punk. The second album, “Ultraglide in Black,” consisted of soul and funk covers. The third album was slated to be a bubblegum-pop record, but songwriting and production conspired to create something closer to the garage rock that was in vogue at the time. The bubblegum project was postponed until the next time around—except it didn’t happen then, either, and the band moved on to other concept albums like “We Have You Surrounded” (sci-fi-inflected dystopian darkness) and “Party Store” (covers of Detroit techno classics). But concept bands are loath to discard a good concept, and the Dirtbombs have finally spit out their bubblegum in the form of “Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey!,” a new record whose exuberantly redundant title references the fountainhead of the genre, the Ohio Express’s 1968 hit “Chewy Chewy.”

As you’d expect from a Dirtbombs album, “Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey!” is both lovingly loyal to the style it’s copying and canny about what its content means when separated from its original context. Rather than use bubblegum as a platform for surreal complexity (as the Apples in Stereo sometimes did) or faux naïveté (as Shonen Knife sometimes did), Collins has crafted a straightforward exercise, filled with predictably generic love songs (“Crazy For You,” “Jump and Shout”) and lightly risqué sex-as-food metaphors (songs like “Hey! Cookie” and “Hot Sour Salty Sweet”). Because the Dirtbombs are at heart a rock band, the execution is a little more muscular than traditional bubblegum, though that works to their advantage—the group’s two-drummer, two-bassist arrangement helps them lock into a convincing groove from the beginning of “Sugar On Top” right on through. Elsewhere, there are overt quotes from familiar sources (“Jump and Shout” is little more than “Mony Mony” in disguise) and occasional surprising touches (flute on the gently psychedelic “Girl on the Carousel”).

“Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey!” isn’t a dumb record by a dumb band; it’s a successfully simple record by a smart band. When the record is done speeding by, when the melodies have either successfully stuck or slipped away, what does it mean to have made it—or, for that matter, listened to it? The mere fact that the experiment occupies a full record is itself a little perverse. Classic bubblegum records consisted of a few singles surrounded by padding. Here, it’s a similar principle. There are strong songs, like “Crazy For You” and “Hey! Cookie,” and slightly less strong songs (“It’s Gonna Be Alright”). This also contributes to a sense of mid-album fatigue, even on an album that clocks in at a half hour.

Bubblegum is also a genre that depended on a consistent pose, one that obliterated the personalities of individual bands. Most of the canonical bubblegum records were created in circumstances that favored songwriters, producers, and labels at the expense of artists, and as a result even the most famous bubblegum bands (Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company, the Music Explosion) are faceless and interchangeable. One group might record another’s song, or one band’s new single might be made with the instrumental tracks of another band’s old single. (Only the Archies had an especially high Q rating, and it’s because they were famous cartoons.) A full-service Dirtbombs bubblegum experiment might have tacked on a seven-inch credited to a parallel band (1910 Dirtgum Company?). Here, there’s always at least a little personality present, thanks in part to Collins’s vocals, which are gritty and passionate even when he’s trying to sell sunshine (and which work best on the slightly sleazier songs).

The record also presents an argument about history, both pop history and the history surrounding pop. Original bubblegum was a counterweight to a rock and roll that was becoming increasingly significant, expanding into album-length statements, and grappling more explicitly with social issues like Vietnam and with literary significance. “Yummy Yummy Yummy” came out in 1968, the same year as Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Crown of Creation,” among dozens of other expansive rock releases. This time around, the Dirtbombs are sticking their bubblegum on the underside of a pop landscape that’s already defiantly superficial, to the point where they sound almost complicated. In the end, that makes “Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey!” a little bit subversive, whether it wants to be or not.

Photograph: In the Red Records.
