It's been a whopping five years since this Paris group's debut EP but the wait has paid off handsomely on their first full length release, delivering an endless stream of high-octane melodic (garage-)punk smashers in the vein of groups like Cheap Whine, Short Days, Red Dons and Telecult… you might also sense a hint of Marked Men, Royal Headache or The Thermals. In a few instances, the songwriting doesn't quite cut it and that's when they veer dagerously close to shallow pop punk territory. However, when they hit, they hit hard and even manage to evoke a subtle retro 60s power pop vibe along the way.
Last year's Health EP was some quality shit already but their newest release is just so ridiculously appealing i wasn't at all prepared for that kind of mayhem. This trio is from Nashville and i suspect that Connor and Sean are the very same dudes best known as Skull Cult otherwise - not a fuckin' clue who Cam is. Oh, and there's one more thing: Being in charge of mixing and mastering, none other than Erik Nervous left his own trademark beer stains all over this cassette whose sound is just as wild and eclectic as consistently catchy. Some echoey garage surf twang? Spaced out psychedelic freakouts? Wire & Mission of Burma vibin' on Benzos? You name it! And hovering even a notch above all that shit, there's the downright perfect 70s power pop-meets-80s hair metal masterpiece Be With You, a knockout punch of the most pleasant kind.
Um… what meaningful thing is there left to say about a new Alien Nosejob record at this point? They kinda come in two shapes: The grab bag style ones where Mr. Robertson branches out in every direction possible and the hyperfocussed monoculture ones where he doubles down on a single genre - like his hardcore 7"s for example or that synth pop/eurotrash 12" maxi a while ago. Well, this one's another grab bag record and apart from that, it's just the plain old usual awesomeness we've all come to expect from this dude who seems utterly unable to write a dull tune.
Yet another EP by Bristol's leading powerpop/postpunk manufacture holds yet another pair of irresistibly melancholic earworms. Does it still make sense to namedrop Television Personalities here or might this shit already qualify as downright, dare i say it… beatlesque?
Power pop aficinados might already be familiar with Owen Williams as the singer of The Tubs, who stood out earlier this year with their excellent Names 7". Cotton Crown is the name of his solo recording project whose debut cassingle inhabits much of the same awesomeness but enriches its two oldschool pop tunes with more of a goth and new wave aesthetic adding just the right amount of low-level cheesyness to elevate, rather than water down the material.
Once again stupid me was way too late noticing that a new record by Cincinnati, Ohio's pop wizards Vacation has hit the shelves via Salinas Records, repeatedly proving their knack for crafting refined jewels of melodic noise at the intersection of oldschool nineties-style indie rock, graceful power- and noise pop. This shit is catchy as fuck without ever getting too formulaic or predictable. A rare breed these days and even more rarely does it ever come across as powerful and flawlessly executed as here. An album of twelve hits and zero misses as for this group, "pretty good" simply doesn't cut it.
No wonder this shit feels familiar. The Wind-Ups is a new solo project of none other than Jake Sprecher of Terry Malts and Smokescreens fame. Much rawer and louder than any of his other groups have dared to sound recently (albeit not quite reaching early Terry Malts levels of speed and fuzzyness), this at times sounds like a fusion of Terry Malts' melodicity with slightly post punk-leaning garage groups like Tyvek or Parquet Courts, while in other moments you can sense a breeze of The Spits, Ricky Hell or anything Reatard(s)-related. Yet when he goes all-in on power pop, there are some undeniable british invasion vibes emanating from his arrangements and compositions.
Speaking of the devil… here's the latest venture of the mighty Warttman empire and it's yet another beauty to behold. Four rough gems of catchy garage punk and power pop that, of all the Warttman-related groups, reminds me most of R.F.M.C. and Satanic Togas, albeit with a certain southern rock (in this particular case… southern what, actually??) bent bearing some similarity to what you heard on early Sheer Mag EPs.
Let me be blunt here: You guys wanna convince me to pay the equivalent of ~4,60€ for a digital download of only two songs, those two songs better be fucking brilliant. Luckily, fucking brilliant is exactly what these these two tracks by some Tokyo group are. Ka-ching!
For every purchase of this nice little cassette put out by our favorite incorporated purveyors of innovative discontinuity you also get a free fake origin story. 1982 my ass, this is of course still the same dude who did this other thing a while back. Though his newest output contains a bit less weird fuckery, it makes up for that with a lot more fuzz, more melodies and negative zero production values that sound just right to my ears.
