To get a mental picture of what Dirty Beaches’ aesthetic is, just try to imagine what karaoke night at the roadhouse in Twin Peaks might be like. More than anything, it’s the work of the film auteurs like David Lynch and Wong Kar-Wai, whom one-man-band Alex Zhang Hungtai is known to admire, that might first come to mind when you hear Dirty Beaches’ eerie, intense, slow-burning music, which creates its own alternate universe that still feels uncannily familiar. Listening to Dirty Beaches is like entering another dimension without realizing it and unearthing an otherworldly hit parade. On the aptly titled debut effort, Badlands, Dirty Beaches delve into the darker side of human nature so vividly and viscerally, conveying existential heft through the worldly weariness and quiet desperation that comes naturally to the Taiwan-born, Hawaii-raised, Canada-based Hungtai. All in all, Badlands is a noir-pop melodrama on which Hungtai takes his anti-hero star turn.                     — Arnold Pan, PopMatters.
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To get a mental picture of what Dirty Beaches’ aesthetic is, just try to imagine what karaoke night at the roadhouse in Twin Peaks might be like. More than anything, it’s the work of the film auteurs like David Lynch and Wong Kar-Wai, whom one-man-band Alex Zhang Hungtai is known to admire, that might first come to mind when you hear Dirty Beaches’ eerie, intense, slow-burning music, which creates its own alternate universe that still feels uncannily familiar. Listening to Dirty Beaches is like entering another dimension without realizing it and unearthing an otherworldly hit parade. On the aptly titled debut effort, Badlands, Dirty Beaches delve into the darker side of human nature so vividly and viscerally, conveying existential heft through the worldly weariness and quiet desperation that comes naturally to the Taiwan-born, Hawaii-raised, Canada-based Hungtai. All in all, Badlands is a noir-pop melodrama on which Hungtai takes his anti-hero star turn.

                    — Arnold Pan, PopMatters.

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