Unga Joacim Kängslickare Harry W Theme Song 6o6o Todo lo que dijo Ruido Visual Desequilibrio Mental Why Bother? Farm Pollution Anytime Cowboy Concerned Citizen Fast Johnny And The Slow Burners Cold World Dragnet Para-noid Press Release Plaster Zongo! I Wanted You All To Myself Spread Joy Pygmalion Aidmoozic 1973 Guiding Light Haare Xray Xeroxx That's Why I Do Drugs
The Moids It Aint Right Doltz Sterling Nose Hair Tangerine Roo Stafford White Paint Lithophones Too Tired To Hate Headcheese Dump Run OWOW M30 Blues Clues Que Lindo What Else? Attest Dread Crazy Clue Slavedriver Military School Hammerhead Vague Fugue I'm Still High Baby Killer Seven and Seven Is
Tracklist
Gloves Leeches Decoder Honey Radar Song for the Public Universal Friend Search Results Secret Bench in the Bardo Traps PS Primitive Object Soft Shoulder (The Theme From) Some Thing Balaclava Love Bog Ismatic Guru It’s Nothing Snout Fever The Rat Tense You Can´t Cheat Hinin Cauchemars Blank Chrome Punk Costume
TestXanny Stars See Right Through JJ Sizza 50 Cent Coin The Easy Eight Hanging On The Wall Polish Gifts Buyer's Market Grand Final Who Runs the Game? Power Pants Any Day Now Sex Mex Asshole OBI Strip Polaroid Postcard Monda Until it Shines 1-800-Mikey Pleasant Morning I Will Die In This Jean Jacket Careless
This thing popped up on the re-branded former Pigeon Bandcamp so Tense may be the exact same folks or they may not, but that's just the usual murkiness we've long gotten used to from the notoriously anonymous Berlin post punk arena, always keeping a low profile. It they're the same though, their sound has surely gone through a bit of a transmutation and strikes me as the most focused and uncompromising it's ever been. Though still pretty much textbook Berlin school post punk in many ways, this shit is setting itself apart nonetheless with levels of doom and anxiety truly goin' through the roof here, feeling kinda alarming even in light of most other things coming from that neck of the woods - the most deliberate blow we've heard from there for a good while, delivered with ice cold precision and unforgiving rotational momentum, its hyper-economical not-a-note-wasted procedure making sure all the pain point gets struck without fail while having me bobbing along in pure ecstatic bliss all the same.
So let me try to get this right. It appears this new-ish Soft Shoulder LP ain't so much a compilation of stuff released on various lathe-cut EPs and -singles over the past couple years rather than a collection of songs recorded years ago that deliberately first got put out in that piecemeal way starting in 2022, but was intended from day one to eventually make up a full LP, which we now have in front of us. Phew, that sure is some kind of clunky roundabout way of doing things and i'll say it's just fitting for one of the most intentionally clunky, roundabout types of bands of our time, one that's been around way longer than this blog, is probably gonna outlast it too and has never failed to amaze with their cluttered and messy, though also totally unmistakable, singular vision of vagely The Fall-inspired, No Wave-informed post punk and noise rock. And you know what? I think it's the greatest thing the (in its current incarnation) one-man-band from Tempe, Arizona has ever done even after the knockout double whammy of 2023s Smile Building's Exit and It’s A Small World After LPs, as i'll say these new old tunes hit even harder in their collected, re-sequenced new form - so much creativity and brilliance concentrated into a dense 21-song 45-minute record that refuses to get tedious for even a second and the added punch and clarity of a stellar new mastering job also sure contributes a good bit to making this thing gel together and rise way above just the sum of its parts.
Holy fuck how the hell did i miss this Vienna group's debut record when it first came out in April? This is for sure nothing less than one of the standout releases of this year on the more oldschool end of the post punk spectrum with a sound feeling like a welcome throwback to the simpler days of the genre's 2010s resurgence with more than just a fleeting glimpse of bands á la Rank/Xerox, Negative Space, earlier works of Institute or The Estranged, maybe a hint of Nervosas even or the very first Diät single? There's also a healthy pulsing garage punk edge to this shit in tunes like Collecting Dust, as well as a neat topping of Wipers-Esque guitar work. This is exactly the kind of stripped-down no-frills direct-impact energy i would sure appreciate more of in this day and age.
Any new 1-800-MIKEY record is always a treat of pleasantly predictable, uneventful comfort food from a dude otherwise known as part of Gee Tee among other things, whose own little niche on the garage-punk / power-pop spectrum has been well-established by now and though his music won't ever blow anyone away through sheer originality or innovation, it sure always does through the pure and innocent power of straightforward, no-frills songwriting brilliance! And so he does again on his third LP now, unleashing yet another batch of infectious and utterly endearing pop earworms that won't leave you terribly surprised but never fail to delight either in what may be their most relaxed and low-key effort so far, this time at points even fully embracing kind of an oldschool dream pop vibe, especially in the record's second half and tunes like K-Style and Falling In Love.
