Video premiere: Dusty Durston, ‘God’s Gift to the Guitar’

Kevin Bronson on January 11th, 2023

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Dusty Durston has quipped that he is “two Gallagher brothers for the price of one” — a statement that seems either tongue-in-cheek or boastful or aspirational, or all three. Accordingly, Durston has titled/branded his debut EP “Manchester Music.”

The Echo Park-based artist got his start in the D.C.-area rock band the Raised by Wolves before heading west. He debuted his solo project this summer with the off-kilter single, “de Sade,” and followed with “Joke Got Old” and “Valley Girls (Balisongs),” the latter turning up as something of a paean to L.A. “So many of us flock to L.A. with a shared dream,” he says, “and then life does its thing, and shows us something completely unexpected, different, and true.”

In sum, “Manchester Music’s” garage-rock nods to Britpop, ’90s alternative and ’00s emo, the common denominator everywhere being … well, attitude. It’s not entirely clear whether the lead track, “God’s Gift to the Guitar,” is self-referential (“These motherfuckers bore and tire me / But you’re something else entirely”), but it has the requisite brass.

Henry Miller directs the “God’s Gift” video, a travelogue of Durston’s road trip last month to Las Vegas for a gig. Have a moment on the Strip with him.

||| Watch: The video for “God’s Gift to the Guitar”