Diarrhea Planet make music for air guitar.
Diarrhea Planet make music for late nights that bleed into early mornings.
Diarrhea Planet make music for you to drunkenly scream along to (even if you don’t know the words).
Diarrhea Planet make music that renders good days better and bad days just a little more tolerable.
There are other bands who do what Diarrhea Planet does. Some of them are smarter. Some of them are hipper. Some of them are funnier. Diarrhea Planet doesn’t care. They have four guitars, which, unless you’re Glenn Branca, is twice the number that anyone needs. Diarrhea Planet isn’t interested in my opinion on this matter; they’re going to play all four of those fuckers, and it’s going to be awesome.
I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams, DP’s second album, finds them expanding on the mostly one-minute-and-change outbursts that characterized Loose Jewels and their early EPs. The lengthier tracks give them time for more things like:
1. Guitar solos
2. Hitting high falsetto notes, like the dude from The Darkness
3. More guitar solos
4. Fretboard tapping
5. Hip-hop-esque shout-outs to friends and contributors
6. A few more guitar solos
Any band with that many people playing guitar at once is obviously aiming at rocking out on a Homeric level, but I’m Rich lays bare the impulse like never before by embracing the sweet sounds of 1970s rock. Other reviewers have compared them to Cheap Trick and Kiss. This is all true. I’ll go ahead and throw Thin Lizzy in there, too. Somehow, Diarrhea Planet is still punk as fuck.
Lyrically, they may never top the brilliant demand from “Fauser” off Loose Jewels: “So gimme another beer/ We’re gonna drink until the sun comes up/ Or at least ‘til there’s no beer.” Still, when I’m Rich is at its best, it’s like getting a pep talk from Randy Savage (God rest his soul), while he’s jumping over a volcano on a motorcycle. “Right now is the worst time/ I feel so heavy,” Jordan Smith commiserates on “Separations,” but reminds us:
You’ve gotta get up/
And carry on
So dig your heels in/
And grit your teeth, man/
And quit your bitching
Even when he’s talking about how shitty it is growing up and how it’s impossible to exist in the moment on “Hammer of the Gods,” it’s alright. We already knew these things; sometimes it just makes you feel less alone to hear someone else say it, too.
Others have criticized the album for being inconsistent, and it’s a pretty fair accusation. The type of euphoric experience the band attempts to bottle is a paradoxically fragile thing and difficult to sustain over an entire album, even one as blazingly tight as this. Still, while I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams may not be a great album, it’s one that can make you feel great while you listen to it, and that’s not something you should ever take for granted.
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