If you like Amyl and the Sniffers, you’ll love Dream, Believe, Achieve by Dick Move.
Punk works best when it doesn’t over-explain itself, it just turns the amps up in the great Motörhead tradition and gets on with it fast without apology, and before a lyric is even shouted you can tell Dream, Believe, Achieve is going to be a rollicking, snot-nosed record through the tone of the guitar alone. Powered by attitude first and technique second, this is the same brash, unapologetic, zero-fucks Aussie energy that’s made Amyl and The Sniffers such a global force.
Loud, rude, and funny, the album kicks off with Fuck It. Lucy Sutter’s accent is so thick the title comes out more like ‘FUCK UT’, and there’s something immediately charming about how regional it sounds, like the sort of band you’d have discovered on a Fat Mike compilation plucked from some far-flung corner of the world. Dream, Believe, Achieve has buckets of attitude, huge charisma, and no interest in reinventing the wheel, with thirteen songs in under twenty-five minutes. The songs are accusatory and direct, fingers pointing squarely at misogynists, corporate creeps and the parade of suited dickheads who somehow keep failing upwards. Classic punk rage delivered with a grin and a sneer, Dick Move are revivalist in sound but contemporary in spirit. It doesn’t sound modern, but the themes couldn’t be more relevent, as demonstrated by the album’s undeniable centrepiece Scared Old Men. The longest track at almost three minutes, it’s an anthem of rolling noise listing the kinds of old men running the world into the ground, and it’s impossible not to want to shout along with a beer in hand as that venomous sass rolls off Lucy’s tongue. There’s a real hunger for fun party-ready punk rock this unfiltered, and Dick Move provide sweaty pub punk that’s proudly uncomplicated, leaning into a rollicking, drunken brightness that turns anger into a party, fires you up, and leaves you sweaty and grinning.