This neat cassette out on Weather Vane Records by a group sharing members with Vintage Crop among others, immediately captivates with an absolutely timeless make of elegant and well-rounded power pop, supported by way above-average songwriting chops. Think of a couple of more or less contemporary groups like Bed Wettin' Bad Boys, Tommy and the Commies, Bad Sports, The Wind-Ups, Datenight, Ex-Gold, Vacation, Mr. Teenage, Yups, Frozen Teens… pick your poison! Though the whole thing may be a bit too front-loaded with most of the hits residing on side a, which leads to a bit of a slump in the second half… kinda like like a meandering Twin Peaks season 2 it still manages to work itself back up to a glorious finale in the closing track Hold Music.
Coming off their unwieldy two-hour Lo-Fi garage-/post-/eggpunk monolith Prawn Static For Porn Addicts from last year, the Moffat Beach, Australia based group returns with a couple of comparatively Mid-to-HiFi sounding singles and EPs. All three of them reinforce my assessment that was already evident on their predecessor, namely that these folks just write kickass tunes, plain and simple, which don't really need to hide behind a wall of low fidelity gunk and grime and can be made to work in pretty much any shape and form. I like my things sounding kinda scruffy and crummy though and thankfully, here they pretty much hit the sweet spot concerning that.
Two outstanding releases rolled in this week dabbling in unapologetically oldschool aesthetics, both prevailing in their own way by fairly different means. No Brains from Utrecht, Netherlands present an uncompromisingly straightforward blend of timeless garage punk and early eighties, somewhat hardcore- and KBD-adjacent noises. I give this shit 0/10 stars for originality and 20/10 stars for sheer unrelenting force. That averages out to an actual 10/10 record, mind you. You think otherwise? That's 'cos you suck at math dude, deal with it. Also plenty of garage action, although with more of a '77 and power pop vibe, is what we get on a brand new EP by California group The Celebrities via US garage punk bulwark Total Punk. A bit more relaxed tempo-wise but these are perfectly fun and catchy little tunes with some pronounced Dead Boys-meet-Dickies energy goin' on here, making for an exquisite sugar rush of an admittedly, at times, kinda cheesy quality which thankfully always gets countered by way an expertly crafted wall of fuzz. I give it a 11/10 for all the glitz, glamour and star power. Maths man, nothing we can do about it.
Awesome to hear this dude's angel voice again! Just a couple weeks ago, Shogun, best known as the powerhouse front man of Royal Headache, made his triumphant return (let's not forget the neat 2018 Shogun and the Sheets 7" though) with the debut EP of Finnoguns Wake, the duo comprising of him and Finn Berzin and now, pretty much out of nowhere, there's also the debut EP by another band of his, Antenna, popping up which, of his projects so far, aligns closest to the oldschool Royal Headache vibe in terms of its song material while moving on from the rough garage sound towards a somewhat slicker aesthetic inbetween the parameters of straight-up melodic punk rock, noise- and power pop with a kinda unexpected Leatherface edge to it. Sweet!
A new EP by the San Antonio, Texas group and as always i'm happy to say that Sex Mex still sound very much like Sex Mex, their mixture of garage- and synth punk, noise- and power pop transporting the aesthetics of only the most catchy and melodic artifacts out of the whole Reatard era. Reliable shit that doesn't try anything funny and instead just delivers on the hooks!
The EP suffers from non-embeddable bandcamp disease, but you can listen to the whole thing over at their bandcamp page.
A mainstay of recent years in garage punk is back with a somewhat more high-profile LP via Erste Theke Tonträger following a recent string of more understated cassette and digital releases. This thing is as eclectic as any of these but at the same time, a lot more focused, determined and consistent than some of those more scrappy recent offerings. Spanning a spectrum from the propulsive post punk of the opening salvo (When It's Gone, A.P.A.C.), melancholy indie rock ballads (Texas Cloud), compfy synth pop tunes (Let U Know) to straightforward garage-/fuzz punk explosions (Can't Take It, 2 Car Garage), there's plenty of meat to dig your teeth into, all held together by Vinny Earley's always confident, often plainly brilliant songwriting powers. Last but not least, Weekend Shadows and Carryon are further examples of exactly that kind of supreme power-/fuzz pop hymn the dude has always excelled at.
Having first come to my attention via a split tape with AJ Cortes and The Burglars, this group from West Palm Beach, Florida has only gotten stronger with every new release and this one is no exception, delivering a new round of catchy, compact blasts in the somewhat eggy realms of power pop, synth- and garage punk evoking thoroughly favorable comparisons to the likes of Gee Tee, Erik Nervous, Vaguess and Satanic Togas.
Following their still fresh, sensational debut EP, this new 2-track digital single of Cincinnati's Gremlins can do no wrong either, Same Fate being a snappy and perfectly economical garage punk ditty while Bliss once again taps into their more psych-infused melodic sensibilities with some distinct hints of Radioactivity, Ex-Gold or Bad Sports.
Spanish noise pop overlords Beta Maximo return with a strong new batch of tunes. Hard to believe their prolific output began just sometime last summer… Starting out with what i'd consider more of an eggpunk-aesthetic, they've constantly kept changing things up, gradually evolving into a somewhat slower, dreamy and slightly shoegaze-y direction and these new songs strike me as the most realized and well-rounded stuff we've heard from them recently.
Whatever there is to be found out about this Cincinnati, Ohio group is cloaked in a veil of uncertainty, not helped in the least by that kinda stereotypical "loser band" history given on this cassette's bandcamp page. So, probably, there are folks known from groups like The Serfs, The Drin, Crime of Passing and Motorbike at work here and at least some of the songs on this can be traced back to the year 2019, when they first appeared on the Pedestrian Sentiments EP. Otherwise i'm really not too sure if any of the details given are to be believed. You can't argue with the music though, which kicks ass from start to finish, in some way evoking the aesthetics, varying fidelity and stylistic variety of golden era Guided By Voices, otherwise roughly oscillating between jangly power pop in the vein of, say, Bed Wettin' Bad Boys or Bad Sports in tracks like Coward Of The State, Wannabe (A Star) and Silver Queen; grimy psychedelic garage rock (Didn't Win The Lottery, Obnoxious And A Neu) as well as a couple of catchy melodic garage punk smashers carrying the signature of groups á la Booji Boys, Tyvek and Parquet Courts. It's Been A Bad Week kinda resembles the garage-drenched noise aesthetics of A Place To Bury Strangers, Peyton's Kids has sort of a Woolen Men feel to it and throughout, the folk-infused post punk of earlier Chronophage comes to mind more than once.