‘Deceiving only those afraid to say you’re faking, Which crime is more corrupt? It’s the cover up, Can’t you see the obvious harm underneath the charm?’ (Emperor)

Smell Of Money is the debut full-length from Texas three-piece, Wet Dip.  It catches you off guard from the very start as the opening track Rollercoaster kicks off with a brief, melodically sung vignette based on Dionne Warwick’s Valley Of Dolls and closes with the haunting cry of ‘When will I know, How will I know, When will I know why?’.  And from that point onwards the album relentlessly, restlessly writhes, its convulsions as organic as they are unexpected.

The guitar is largely skeletal, scratchy, abrasive.  The rhythm section is anxious, jittery, uneasy yet also, at times, undeniably infectious.  This stripped back palette provides the perfect backdrop to an utterly virtuoso vocal performance.  Alternating between Spanish and English, it sweeps from the stridently melodic to sardonically detached spoken word, from nursery rhyme innocence to the utterly venomous.

The track list includes two covers, Silver by The Pixies and Pelo Sulelto by Gloria Trevi, that are both so vividly reimagined by the band that they are absorbed seamlessly into the album’s sonic trajectory.  However, the highlights are Wet Dip’s own compositions – the surging Rollercoaster, the tensely juddering yet catchy Stray, the verging on jaunty Emperor, the discordant eruption that is Killfloor, with its memorable mantra, ‘Smells like shit, That’s the smell of money’.