Dwarves – How To Win Friends And Influence People (2001)

December 13, 2024

Well, this was fun but I find myself asking that eternal and immortal question: why? Judging by the cheeky intro track, it seems this record is some sort of retaliation to the criticisms levelled against late-90s Dwarves material for being too soft or commercial. Surely then, the way to combat this would be to a.) ignore the haters and do whatever that makes you artistically happy or successful, or b.) write some NEW snotty punk 1 minuters about drugs and sleaze?

I love most of these songs. So I will go to the albums that they are on. It really is pretty straightforward. Why complicate things? Maybe people who got into them from The Dwarves Come Clean couldn’t handle Blood, Guts & Pussy? It would make sense perhaps to “reinterpret” early Dwarves as “new” Dwarves but that doesn’t happen here. It’s the same songs but a different studio sound, like some sort of drugs and jailbait fuelled Agathocles.

On top of that, the Dwarves website promises these rerecordings to be harder and faster than before, which is just simply not true.

I would therefore conclude, despite not being aurally terrible, this record to be a failure and a complete waste of everyone’s time.