Whenever Billiam does shit, it's Billiam week, all week. There's just no way evading the insane allure of one of current garage punk's brightest luminaries who's often getting tagged with the eggpunk label (including by me) and really, probably can't be evaluated in full isolation from that whole mess but also never quite fit into that template all that neatly and frictionless, more often than not feeling way more grounded in an earlier era of quirky garage- and synth punk that preceded our contemporary eggosphere, frequently more Ausmuteants than Prison Affair and chances are, when the genre bubble finaly deflates giving way to a barren eggpocalyptic hellscape, Billiam's just gonna emerge out of the rubble, shake the dust of his sleeves, light a cigarette Snake Plissken style and hum a new tune about the structural integrity of high-rise buildings into his bizarre nuclear-powered steampunk dictaphone on the way home.
Anyway, it's Billiam week again and his new LP is a good one, who woud've thought? Engineered by Checkpoint's Erik Scerba (not the dude's only contribution you'll see posted here this week), this may well be the tightest and punchiest a Billiam recording has ever sounded, though thankfully the added fidelity doesn't try anything untoward to sand off his trademark rough edges and eccentric flourishes in these twelve new tunes that once again show off the guy's unfailing, inventive song-crafting abilities, all the while sounding unmistakably like himself yet also never failing to come up with some neat surprise just around the next corner. As a DIY genre auteur he's kinda the equivalent to that certain kind of well-regarded genre director you know is gonna make a certain kind of movie but you also have a well-founded trust in their skills and creative vision to know they'll still surprise and thrill you in unexpected ways every time.