The Heavy: The House That Dirt Built

Part of a BBC Review

The title of The Heavy’s first album, 2007’s Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, was the perfect trailer. Lifting Samuel L Jackson’s biblical quote from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction set their stall out perfectly; just like the director’s films, their music picked seeds from the past and ground them into a modern cut ’n’ paste cult classic, part Curtis Mayfield, part Isaac Hayes, part Led Zeppelin, all heart and soul.

The House That Dirt Built nicely builds the plot, opening up whole new musical storylines to explore. By the fifth track they’ve already gone through soul, garage punk, voodoo swamp revue, a bit of James Brown funk, Hendrix and balls-out rock; by album’s end they’ve also kicked rockabilly, reggae and even a closing ballad into the gumbo pot. The most surprising thing, however, is how good they are at making it all sound like the work of just one band.

The House That Dirt Built