This is a great week to channel your inner basic punk bitch as at least three out of the four records i’m posting today aren’t exactly gonna win any awards for innovation and originality but make up for it by sheer competence in songwriting and determined sledgehammer performances. And so does this new Citric Dummies Record (which is exactly as much a split record as Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass was a Hüsker Dü record and Die Nasty had any Rikk Agnew on it), which pretty much perfects the group’s formula combining lots of Dead Boys energy with some Rocket From The Tombs and Death-informed proto punk flourishes, some pre-Rollins Black Flag- and Bad Brains-ish early hardcore punk to a highly flammable concoction that, despite inspiring all that retro name dropping, manages to feel weirdly contemporary.
