Dirty Honey finds big riffs & “studio magic” on sophomore album, ’Can’t Find the Brakes’
Dirty Honey Can’t Find the Brakes on their new album, but they did find a whole lotta riffs.
Take lead single “Won’t Take Me Alive,” which is based around a lick created by guitarist John Notto.
“I’m not scared of saying I think it’s one of the best riffs I’ve heard in the last decade in rock music,” frontman Marc LaBelle tells ABC Audio.
While “Won’t Take Me Alive” follows in the tradition of past Dirty Honey tunes like “When I’m Gone,” “Rolling 7s” and “California Dreamin’,” Can’t Find the Brakes has its fair share of experimentation, fostered by an in-person recording environment that the band didn’t have on their 2021 self-titled debut. That resulted in a few moments of what Notto calls “studio magic,” such as the outro to the closing track “Rebel Son,” which was a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment addition.
Notto recalls there being a suggestion to rerecord and “perfect” the jam, but he and his bandmates wanted to keep its “raw spirit.”
“That’s certainly a first for us, to have something like that on a record, any record,” he says.
Can’t Find the Brakes marks Dirty Honey’s second album with producer Nick DiDia, and the group felt more confident to advocate for their ideas amid disagreements. For example, LaBelle was adamant about keeping a particular vocal intro in the opening track, “Don’t Put Out the Fire.”
“You have to keep asking yourself, ‘Do I really believe in this?,’ when you’re fighting for it,” Notto says.
He laughs, “And then you have to tell this older man who’s made, like, I don’t know, 20 massive records that he’s wrong.”
Can’t Find the Brakes drops Friday, November 3.
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