The newest of a, to be perfectly honest, fucking inpenetrable amount of releases which have accumulated on this Totowa, New Jersey group’s bandcamp page over the past few years, delivers a pure spectacle of short and catchy little tunes with a maximum length of exactly one minute, firing off fourty tracks inbetween the coordinates of garage punk, power pop, oldschool indie rock and fuzz punk in well under half an hour. The whole thing makes me think of a couple of 1980s DIY punk and indie rock landmarks like the early works of Guided By Voices, Fastbacks and M.O.T.O. just as much as a couple more recent bands like Booji Boys, Print Head, Vaguess and Datenight.
Berlin post punk solo act DBR has already been sticking around for a bit and put out a whole bunch of EPs along the way, first under the name Dee Bee Rich, later shortened to the acronym DBR. His newest cassette via Turbo Discos is easily his most accomplished and versatile creation in a while, equipping the fairly minimalist, understated approach his more recent work has gradually morphed into with a whole new sense of melody, elegance and catchyness, while still coming across quirky, playful and odd as fuck.
Five excellent new bursts of catchy, simple and mimimalist synth punk is what we get on the newest EP of this Dallas, Texas group. Though the title of the opening track Q:Where? A: On The Square! kind of evokes associations of Devo, i’d say actually this shit sounds a lot closer to some of the more underground acts of the ’70s and ’80s á la Minimal Man, Nervous Gender, Screamers, Units, Primitive Calculators or Visitors, while in the current scene you might also compare them to groups such as Victor, O-D-EX, Lost Packages and Freak Genes.
Atlanta’s post punk scene strikes again! This group appears to have at least one (ex-?) member of Predator on board, whose sound this stuff certainly bears some resemblence to, as well as the genre’s other quite obvious local mainstay, Nag. Whiphouse choose to label themselves as a death rock group and indeed, what (ever so slightly, though) differentiates this group from the aforementioned acts is a more pronounced classic goth rock vibe and a more simplistic approach to songwriting and arrangements. What can i say, nothing wrong with that. This shit works!
On their third LP, coming to our shores via Sydney label Urge Records, the Berlin post punk duo consisting of Erin Violet and former Trust Punks vocalist Joseph Thomas sees them dialing down the folk-ish leanings a bit in favor of a slightly darker, heavier sound while retaining all of that overbearing sense of melancholy and the song-focused qualities that already had the previous records towering way above the bulk of the genre, prompting exclusively flattering comparisons to acts such as Public Interest, Marbled Eye, Waste Man, Tube Alloys, Corker, Glittering insects, Public Eye, Kitchen’s Floor, VR Sex and Mothers Milk.
The Sydney garage-/eggpunk powerhouse’s newest record is actually more of a collection of scraps, demos, odds and ends left on the cutting room floor over the years but… damn! If this shit here represents Gee Tee’s b-material, i’m gladly gonna eat up whatever c-list shit they’ve got lingering in the archives too. This is a brilliant record from start to finish and mandatory listening for any discerning connoisseur of catchy goodness in the realms of garage punk, fuzz- and power pop, all killer no filler!
