Not a whole lot ever changes in the music of Vancouver’s Needles//Pins and in crap times like the past year-and-a-half, this familiarity is rather comforting. They still play that certain kind of punk rock… you know the one. The wholly unsubtle und unapologetically earnest, melodic, emotional and euphoric, the folk- and americana-infused kind. The kind that inevitably leads to embarrassing singalongs and awkward displays of emotion from concert audiences. Disgusting, man. I miss it so much…
Some pathetic loser in Leipzig, Germany is playing around with bleep-emitting hardware and recording equipment, not yet fully realizing this leads to him ending up fighting the good battle at the forefront of the egghead revolution. This record is a fucking masterpiece you need to have in your life. Having only listened to it once, i already feel a lot smarter, more balanced – full enlightenment only inches away. Almost being a wise old man myself, i can’t stress enough how fucking proud i am of this little shit.
The Berlin scene, where every musician is also secretly playing in all your other favorite groups, has dropped another pile of something. That something starts out kinda like S.Y.P.H. filtered through Wire and Crass, subsequently touching on Weirdcore stuff á la Stinkhole, Stuttgart-style-post-punk-but-much-more-fun and last but not least, dissonant post punk/proto noise sketches reminiscent of Membranes. Sometimes they opt to spew their lyrical nonsese in the english language which i think has its own awkward charm.
