Robbie Thunder – Only Tonite
TV Crime – Never Been In Love
Shrapnel – Sedan Crater
This Sydney group has an embarrassment of riches in store for us that’s being poured into a sonic guise of timeless elegance here – heavy duty power pop songwriting chops take on the shapes of Byrds-inspired, relaxed garage rock, british invasion- and first wave british psychedelia-fueled jangle pop anthems which often come across like a less sarcastic variant of The Soft Boys, a more retro-minded Guided By Voices or the more powerpop-ish corners of the Bevis Frond galaxy, though you may just as well compare them to more recent, mostly US-based groups like The Resonars, White Fence, Honey Radar, Good Flying Birds, Chronophage, Violent Change, Scupper, Germ House or Mo Troper, while in more indie rock-leaning tunes like Winston you can sense just a little hint of fellow australians Treehouse.
Album-Stream →Gus Baldwin and The Sketch – The Sketch
The first half of this Austin, Texas group’s newest LP succeeds mostly by way of sheer force and momentum in what admittedly ain’t the most subtle or sophisticated thing you’ve ever heard, a kinda classic riff- and shred-heavy brute force approach to garage punk we’ve previously heard from acts like Jean Mignon, Sauna Youth, Hamer, D. Sablu, Clamm or Sweet Reaper. It’s in the second half that this record really comes into its own though. Just right on time when the magic of rocket-fueled riffing starts to run into the realm of diminishing returns, they shake things up a quite bit and pull some of the album’s biggest standouts out of their hats like the the hymnic, catchy melancholia of Slacker’s Prom, the off-the-shelf-psychedelia-colliding-with-cowpunk explosion Beautiful Delilah, while the midtempo ballad What The Freaks Say offers something of a Vaguess vibe and the closing track Sympathy For Sunday shamelessly revels in drugged-out devil-worshipping acid rock excess.
Album-Stream →Klint & The Gents – Split
As usual of a high-caliber, this new Split 7″ coming our way from Italy’s Goodbye Boozy Records. Schleswig, Germany’s Viking Synth Punk Maestro Klint goes full hardcore mode on his side, churning out three massive bursts of his trademark abrasive force, spiked with plenty of melodic catchyness all the same. The dude can do no wrong and there still ain’t anything quite like his music out there. The other side is made up of four new tracks by Hamburg’s The Gents who, compared with their previous EP, are playing it decidedly fast and rough here as well, making for a perfectly substantial attack of straightforward garage punk bearing some similarity to the likes of Bart and the Brats or The Uglies.
Album-Stream →Kowboje – Kowboje II
Way more egg- than cowpunk, what this group from Poznań, Poland sets out to overwhelm our senses with. This shit is certainly among the more out-there offerings at the altar of playful insanity the genre has given us so far and it’s a bottomless well of unpredictable fun that threatens to fall apart or go up in flames any moment but is so ridiculously satisfying while it lasts, reminding me of a colorful and markedly international bunch of acts such as early Skull Cult, Goblin Daycare, Paulo Vicious, Metdog, Beer, Cool Sorcery… and you can’t leave out Barcelona’s genre overlords Prison Affair of course.
Album-Stream →Fast Johnny and The Slow Burners – Fast Johnny and The Slow Burners
At long last, here’s the debut EP by Brisbane’s Fast Johnny and the Slow Burners which revels in an unexpectedly oldschool make of garage punk mostly free of contemporary trappings – no egg, no synths, no bullshit and more than a little bit of a classic Gun Club energy to it. As such, it’s certainly a bit at odds with more recent developments in the australian underground and could just as well have originated ten, twenty or thirty years ago and wouldn’t have looked out of place. And what can i say, the formula still works flawlessly as the individual tunes simply stand up to the occasion and sometimes it doesn’t take more than a bunch of killer riffs and a steady beat to make me go like mmmh, that’s nice.
Album-Stream →Embargo – Demo
This group from Leipzig, Germany presents a curious mixture of slightly garage-leaning post punk that should sound pleasantly familiar to vigilant observers of the german scene yet operates on a level way above your average german-language punk artifact. The EP starts out strong with the death rock-infused vibes of A-B-C Alarm and only gets even better from there with songs like Trikont and Un Día En Grimma echoing other local garage acts á la Lassie, Ambulanz and Exwhite while other moments transport some of the DIY post punk vibe of Onyon or of Berlin groups like Pretty Hurts, Pigeon, Aus, Benzin and not least the also partly Leipzig-based group Laff Box.
Album-Stream →Thee Mutilators – I Have Seen The Horror Of The Future
On their kickass debut cassette this group from the british island of Jersey enters the scene with a fully formed sound juxtaposing some rather dark lyrical contents with completely opposite sonics of a markedly quirky, egg-ish quality, all of which reminds me of such things as early Powerplant, Tommy Cossack & The Degenerators, Wristwatch, S.B.F., Chtr or Beer.
Album-Stream →