Simple and catchy post punk from the ever-busy scene of Leipzig, Germany. While it won’t win any awards for innovation, their synth-heavy, minimalistic approach to the genre has that vaguely oldschool cold-war-era vibe dialed in just right while in Shining River Utah, some folk/americana vibes akin to Angst or mid-to-late 80s Gun Club creep in. Subsequently they like to mix shit up and keep things interesting all the way; despite staying well inside the genre’s established parameters radiating an unexpectedly fun, warm and uplifting vibe much of the time.
Such a neat cloudy puddle of innocent and filthy joy, this set of lo-fi demo recordings by some philadelphia garage group kicking up a fuzz of the most oldschool and primitive kind. Kinda like the early works of Eddy Current Suppression Ring and UV Race augumented with that more primal energy akin to earlier acts such as Gories, Oblivians, Reatards.
Ooohkay… still recovering from yesterday's "deutschpunk" ambush, let's now focus on our foreign language / world music department again. "Wöd" appears to be austrian for "World", as well as "pretty fuckin' rad", at least that's what the internet says and the internet is always right. So yeah, this shit's pretty wöd, as you'd expect from the successor to the Vienna garage punk group's kinda leiwand 2020 EP.
Not long after the kickass Schedule 1 EP we get to hear yet another group reviving the spirit of late 2000's / early 2010's melodic post punk, once again brought to us by the punk powerhouse that is Dirt Cult Records. This time the folks responsible are from, lemme see… Bielefeld, Germany?!? Are you fuckin' kidding me? No, no, no this can't be right. Musically this is your familiar, somewhat oldschool Wipers-influenced, song-driven approach and the songwriting chops on display here are more than able to pull that shit off. This is a hell of a treat for fans of stuff á la The Estranged, Anxious Living, Daylight Robbery, Xetas, Red Dons or, more recently DDR and the aforementioned Schedule 1.
Their recent Skeleton/Runaway digital single was some quality shit already and a huge step up from previous releases. With their newest EP, the Austin, Texas group keeps the good stuff coming, clear highlights this time being the perfect power pop one-two punch The Amazing Super Ultra Spiderman & Shit Me Out but the rest is great fun too, coming across a bit like an amazing super ultra holy trinity of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Set-Top Box.
A highly appetizing first taste that is, the debut EP of this London group playing a somewhat hard to pin down, adequately rough-edged yet also kinda catchy style that's like 60% garage punk and 40% postcore, overall reminding me of a rather diverse cluster of groups among which are the likes of The Abandos, Obits, Golden Pelicans, Mass Lines, Dumb Punts and Ascot Stabber.
I gotta say i'm more than delighted with the versatile and smart and weird ways in which garage punk has evolved over more recent years but, you know, sometimes i'm just craving for something more oldschool and primal. Detroit duo 208's new cassette on Painters Tapes does a fabulous job scratching that particular itch, containing the raw, primitive, sweaty and drunken blues variety of garage punk, the kind you need to have a soul but no brain to appreciate. Yeah, i'm aware that the soul is a purely religious construct that has zero evidence going for it in real life. So let's say instead that you need a broken soulful brain to appreciate it, or something like that, okay?. The fidelity of this is just perfect, the kind of production where heavy clipping both digital and analog is a feature, not a bug - a fuzz-saw mangler of jams which might evoke comparisons to mostly older shit like Oblivians, Gories, Pussy Galore, Feedtime, Reatards and whatnot.
The spanish garage scene is full of gold lately (and speaking of el diablo… have you all heard that fabulous Hogar LP yet?) - latest piece of evidence is this nice little EP by a group from… Barcelona, i guess? At least that's one of the few words i'm able to recognise in their lyrics. They're playing a fun variety of garage punk that mostly alternates between straight and stupid '77-ish simplicity and a more contemporary, angular groove á la Uranium Club, Pinch Points.
For his second 7" on Goodbye Boozy Records, Cal Donald aka Liquid Face increases both the energy- and distortion levels considerably, making his special sauce of garage-/synth-/post punk come across kinda like a weird crossbreed between Powerplant, Mononegatives and the noise punk of Brandy.
I somehow managed to overlook this enchanting album of not-your-average post punk fare when it first came out as a cassette on Future Shock and damn, i should totally hang for that. Here's my second chance however, as this thing has now been reissued on vinyl by Drunken Sailor Records. The Drin is a solo project of Dylan McCartney with whom you might already be familiar as part of groups such as Vacation, The Serfs, Crime Of Passing and The Switzerlands, among others. The record starts off with a Joy Division-esque beat getting drenched in drones that have a certain Suicide-meets-Chrome vibe to them. Next up is a track that sounds kinda as if early Ride had reached dub-enlightenment. Subsequently, this shit appears to cycle through random iterations of early british DIY post punk, more than once conjuring up the spirit of The Membranes, Desperate Bicycles and Swell Maps. Of more recent acts, you might draw some comparisons to Exek at its more dub-heavy outgrowths as well as the neo kraut and space rock explorations of Moon Duo. The whole thing's such a beauty all the way through.
