Joe Sutkowski aka
Dirt Buyer shares fourth single “Heartache” off his forthcoming album
Dirt Buyer II out October 20 via Bayonet Records.
Listen to “Heartache” HERE.
“Heartache” follows “Gathering Logs” and “Fentanyl,” the album’s centrepiece and “On & On” that Stereogum called an “emo throwback…darkly dramatic.”
Dirt Buyer’s new album is a documentation of making it to the other side. Sutkowski grew up in New Jersey, and although he lives in Brooklyn now, he remains “an emo kid at heart,” garnering inspiration from bands like My Chemical Romance and Muse, the latter of whose theatrical, dramatic performances inspired the band’s own vocal-forward, soaring takes. Initially working together as a duo while Sutkowski and Ruben Radlauer (Model/Actriz) were at school in Berklee, the band’s self-titled 2019 debut album was recorded on an IPhone in their practice room on just drums and guitar, and the quietly striking, nuanced stylings earned them accolades far beyond the “fake record label” the two made up to originally release their music.
The band’s new album, Dirt Buyer II, was recorded in February 2020, and represents a foray into heavier material that marks a deeper shift for the band. Now working as a trio, Sutkowski is flanked by Tristan Allen on bass and Mike Costa on drums, a fellow Berklee grad who cut his teeth playing in bands across Boston including past collaborations with Sutkowski. Half-recorded while the band was on tour with Surf Curse, the record finds Sutkowski reaching out for places, people and beliefs to ground him.
Sutkowksi grapples with loss throughout the record, often mourning relationships that have yet to come to pass (“Sand”) and questioning the fragility of time. “How the leaves have changed,” he intones, repeating the phrase throughout the album. Three years on, Dirt Buyer II is an artifact of a time that is still preserved through the headrush of peak memory; the magnitude of high highs and low lows that are both addictive and transformative. “If heavy’s what you wanted / heavy’s what you’re gettin’ / heavy’s what you needed, believe me now / if change is what you wanted / change is what you’re gettin,” he sings on “Heavy,” ironically one of the catchiest tracks on Dirt Buyer II. But with that comes the opportunity to see life for what it’s worth: “I’m fortunate to have a thing that’s an outlet but also an escape.”
Half-recorded in his mother and uncle’s upstate house where he turned the living room into a studio, he contemplates the beauty and disaster around him—all refracted through visceral visual imagery of how the physical earth meets the unknown to converge in something greater than ourselves. “This is all a living chronicle of all I want to do, which is feel good and be happy,” he admits. “I’m a completely different person now – a better version of myself.” Processing the past, Sutkowksi has emerged with newfound belief, fully intact and with a new path forward to the future.
