Here’s an earworm for you: veteran Toronto duo Dirt Farmer today unveils “Robbed My Happiness,” the shimmering first single from its upcoming eleventh – yes, eleventh – album Curio, and ... yes … yes, you’re right to ask “Where the hell did this wonderful little thing come from?”
Dirt Farmer has been a band for awhile. Since October of 1986, to be exact. And although there have been minor twists in its physical configuration and major twists and turns in its ever-curious, ever-enthused and ever-evolving musical output across the intervening decades, at the centre of the whole thing has always been the close friendship between Scott Cryer and Rob MacDonald and the symbiotic pop language they speak. For close to 40 freakin’ years. So that’s where this wonderful little thing came from. This is what Cryer and MacDonald have been doing, relentlessly and religiously, all along: working towards their next round of mutual goosebumps in the studio, working towards the perfect pop song.
Dirt Farmer is all about goosebumps, by the way, and “Robbed My Happiness” – a bittersweet, slightly self-loathing but also slyly self-aware anthem for all of us who are prone to replaying our latest mistakes “Over again and again / Like a nightmare daydream that wouldn’t end … Just a little bit worse with a darker ending” until we can no longer get out of bed in the morning – reaches a level on the Dirt Farmer “goosebump gradient” rarely attained in the past. It sounds like the Pixies on OMD and MDMA. It fizzes like a sugary sparkling-wine beverage that’s become sentient enough to kinda hate itself but with a sense of humour. It floats into your head effortlessly and then it sticks around ’cause it reminds you of all the times you’ve been there. Again: it’s a wonderful little thing.
Better yet? “Robbed My Happiness” was one of the innumerable songs Cryer and MacDonald found just sitting around in the bottomless piles of tapes and digital files and notebook pages and god knows what else they’ve accumulated over more than 35 years of doggedly making music together and getting better at making music together that they raided for Curio, to be released May 19 via most of your favourite online platforms. Dirt Farmer is sitting on so much random, awesome shit that Dirt Farmer now finds itself in a position where it has so much random, awesome shit in its possession that occasionally that random, awesome shit coalesces thematically into an album. Curio is that. We can’t wait for you to hear it. Meantime, trust us when we say that “Robbed My Happiness” will more than wet your whistle.