England’s Noise Merchant Records just reissued this Spokane, Washington group’s debut tape which i’ve somehow either missed or stupidly ignored last winter. On it, they inject some slight hint of early Superchunk or Dinosaur Jr into an overall sound more in alignment with 1st- and 2nd-wave emocore, getting all the basics right at reproducing the genre’s tropes and conventions that made it awesome in the first place while avoiding all the pitfalls that would make it a fucking joke and a tired cliché later on, while the songwriting chops on display here are somewhat basic but confident and sure-footed enough to keep you engaged, even if Puddy Knife won’t add anything new to the genre here rather than reminding us of how much fun and joy you could get out of it in its earlier days and still can to this day, once you strip it of its acquired baggage of clownish mall punk cosplay and performative self-pity.
Typically excellent new fodder from some of my favorite post punk weirdos. The first track Optimism on this new Cassingle by the Cleveland, Ohio group encapsulates all the hallmarks of their angular brand of post punk into a compact and super-catchy little package while Foot Of Pride is a somewhat more ambitious, sprawling affair which – with its mid-tempo pace and uncharactaristically expansive length of over five minutes – still doesn’t ever come close to overstaying its welcome thanks to its understated but effective slow-burn dramaturgy and a performance every bit as sharp and precise as anything this one-of-a-kind group has done before.
Their rather Lo-Fi 2024 Demo was pure bliss already and now we get to behold the first more polished recordings of the NYC group on this new digital 2-track single, presenting them in a somewhat different light with less of a pronounced garage vibe, instead being more reminiscent of the more indie rock-ish, melodic leaning ends of the ’80s SST Records spectrum and loosely related shit, somewhere inbetween the likes of mid-career Hüsker Dü, early Dinosaur Jr., Man Sized Action, a hint of Angst maybe too. In that regard, and especially strongly in the undeniable über-hit Combat Zone (Left For Dead), these tunes remind me a lot of the incredible first Milk Music EP.
Big Break of Sheffield, UK previously made some waves with two excellent EPs of both pissed and quirky garage punk in 2021/’22, later compiled and expanded into a full LP in 2023. Their newest EP now consolidates that strong impression with another neat grab bag of tunes of an overall slightly more quirky and uplifting quality. While the opening track Prototype excells as a straightforward no-frills punk tune, The Goon is pretty much the opposite, having a bit of an egg-ish vibe goin’ on. Wearing a Wire then reminds me of the garage punk minimalism of acts like The UV Race, Eddy Current Supprission Ring, Sauna Youth and Tyvek. Then at last, the closing track The Eunuch, with its sleazy growls right at the beginning and some ultra cheesy synth action feels kinda like a quirked-up Ex-Cult gone gloriously off the rails.
