This Melbourne group’s third EP has five new outbursts of post punk for us that i wouldn’t exactly call surprising or innovative but it gets all the basics right, is competent and well put together while holding a neat balance alternating between cold, clinical tension and warmer, melodic relief in their confident and actually quite varied songwriting, frequently reminding me of shit á la Girls In Synthesis, Corker, Criminal Code, Rank/Xerox, Negative Space, Shepparton Airplane, Batpiss or Bench Press.
There’s some thoroughly fun and uplifting energy to this debut EP of spanish group Sonic Youth Of Today and if you’ve been paying any attention in recent years, it’s immediately obvious that it’s the Beta Máximo dude at work here, transforming the same melodicism and noise pop-ish vibes into a similarly quirky synth punk context that, in addition to his own work so far, also calls to mind bits and pieces of stuff á la O-D-EX, Digital Leather, Mind Spiders, Spyroids, Freak Genes or that recent Emmet O’Connor LP.
Beats me what being particularly “motorcycle” is supposed to entail (having two wheels and a motor and drinking gasoline i think…) but i can say with more confidence that i like Heather The Jerk tunes a lot better when they’re very motorcycle than when they’re not so much, as this this new EP has been the missing data point for me to determine as much from its fuzzy little bubblegum-infused garage punk- and noise pop gems that come across like a mixture between the only great pop punk group in the world – i’m speaking of Fastbacks, of course – and the eighties noise-/fuzz pop masterpieces of early The Primitives singles, helped along in no small part by an impeccable bundle of new tunes propelled forward by what’s no doubt the most eager performance we’re heard of them so far.
Weird that this apparently all-year-round halloween-themed group never entered my radar before last year’s Chumpire 247 EP, well… better late than never i guess. Their newest one delivers an even stronger set of new tunes that sound like an unlikely crossbreed of classic Spits, Why Bother?, Trauma Harness, Woolen Men in power pop mode and maybe even a slight hint of Hüsker Dü. Crazy deformed little creature that is, but miraculously it doesn’t face any problems walking and singing and standing on its own three feet of varying length without falling over even once.
Now here’s some excellent new garage-/synth-/post punk shit that’s only tangentially egg-related but certainly a good bit Devo-fied nonetheless and best of all, pretty versatile and casually shapeshifting in its sonic parameters, as a result reminding me of an appropriately eclectic bunch of groups like Checkpoint, Kitchen People, Ghoulies, Fungas, Cherry Cheeks, Ausmuteants, early Powerplant, Electric Prawns 2 and Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice.
It’s been a weak of smaller-fry (albeit excellent) releases and i’m behind on my blogging queue anyway so i’m gonna take the easy route of collating it all into a single blog post this time, okay?
First off, there’s some delicious new hardcore shit from Hattiesburg group Silo Kids, further bolstering the stellar reputation of that unassuming mid-sized Mississippi town for being on the forefront of inventive and quirky hardcore punk that just refuses to play by the established rules and conventions.
With Power Pants of Winchester, Virginia on the other hand, we kinda know what we can expect from a new release, of which there are quite a few already and the next one is never too far off anyway (their recent CS5 Cassingle having been mere weeks ago aswell). Their newest PP11 EP feels like a considerable level-up from anything they’ve done before though in a discography that just may have started to feel a bit redundant at some points. Not that anything fundamental about their catchy melodic garage punk sound had changed, but these are cleary some of the most rippin’ and well-crafted tunes we’ve heard of them so far.
Scrawlers from Tacoma, Washington then appear to scratch a quite similar – though also way more fuzzed-out and rough – itch of simple and effective garage punk delicacies that’ll sure have friends of S.B.F., Kid Chrome, Gobs or Robbie Thunder approvingly nodding along to.
Dallas, Texas group Thyroids have been going for many years now but really hit their stride in the current decade with their sound growing ever more unpredictable, evading clear catigorizarion and this holds truer than ever on their newest two-track single, on which elements of garage- and synth punk, noise rock/-pop and eggpunk bounce off each other to exhilarating effects.
Last but not least, there’s yet another Snarewaves EP delivering more of their patented electro punk formula that’s every bit as strikingly simple as it is out-there and pretty much unique right now and although you’d think that kind of thing would run into the law of diminishing returns at some point, so far every new release just has left me craving more of that good shit.
I wasn’t entirely sold on the novelty-rocker vibes of the bluesy, hard-/dad-rockin’ preview tune Hairy Man, but damn, does this new record not only get better from there on (plus, Hairy Man does work a lot better in the album context too), but there’s also easily some of the groups best material to be found on here with the following tracks Beef and Fire having plenty of an oldschool Useless Eaters and Pow! feel to them while Out Of Touch gradually dials up the levels of psychedelic haze that we’ve known at its most pronounced from their previous Perspex LP, before Hell (or rather, the first part thereof) finally kicks open the floodgates of catchy-as-fuck garage punk/fuzz pop goodness as we all know pretty much any Electric Prawns 2 record eventually does. The second circle of Hell (or maybe they’re better understood as two seperate songs, both called Hell?) takes all of the above and imbues it with a slightly campy goth note not unlike more recent Powerplant. Other notable highlights are the burst of ultra-classic aussie rock’n’roll that is Piece of Me and the in equal measure melodic and blues-infused bubblegum vibes of Waste, all of it arguably making for their overall strongest record so far. Who would’ve thought, making albums of conventional length may not be the worst idea after all!
Previous releases of this group from Pisa, Italy have all been obscured by a thick veil of of Lo-Fi grime and muck, yet the rough sonics couldn’t do anything to fully conceal the raw brilliance hiding beneath all the clutter. For their newest EP, they polished up their production values just enough for the first time to bring their eccentric, pocket-sized post punk epics out of the murky shadows and confirm our suspicion they don’t have to fear the revealing exposure to broad daylight. Starting off with a vibe not dissimilar to early 2010s surf-infused noise pop and fuzz punk groups like Male Bonding, early Wavves, No Age, Times Beach, Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! or, way more recently, Shooting Losers, it doesn’t take long though before their tunes also develop a distinct last-decade post punk feel á la Die! Die! Die! and Piles, but also rougher, weirder punk phenomena like Dumb Vision, Piss Wizard and Pink Guitars wouldn’t be too far fetched as a reference. On top of that, there’s an unmistakable hint of mid-90s-to-early-2000s postcore at play here, the kind some uncultured philistines may be inclined to dub screamo but let it be known once and for all that this distinction shall be considered an insult to any good band, so no, this ain’t screamo and fuck you for even bringing up that cursed idea.
Propulsive and well-rounded post punk on what appears to be the fourth album already by this group from Oslo, Norway that’s been existing for well over a decade by now but hasn’t released anything new in the last eight years. Anyway, this is highly competent shit that imbues their dark post punk / postcore sound – at first glance fitting in pretty well with the genre’s contemporary stretch – with plenty of thrilling texture, flashes of melody and a good deal of compositional finesse and rock-solid craftsmanship, reminding me of an unexpectedly colorful bunch of groups including the likes of Criminal Code, Wymyns Prysyn, Pretty Hurts, Corker, The Nation Blue, Girls In Synthesis, Bloody Gears or that recent Shepparton Airplane LP.
The second LP of Minnesota’s Yuasa-Exide starts off with a thrusting burst of fuzzed-out catchy mid-tempo punk channeling a mix of mid-fi era Guided By Voices, the more power pop-ish ends of the Bevis Frond universe and a slight hint of Eric’s Trip or classic-era Dinosaur Jr. to boot in the opening track The Picture You Painted, just to increasingly and deliberately destabilize the sonic landscape on subsequent tracks. Their tunes and arrangements based somewhere inbetween the realms of ’80s to ’90s indie- and college rock, Flying Nun Records-style psychedelia and busy C86-ish strummery gain a more shambolic, hazy and surreal quality, always in acute danger of falling apart at the seams. Yet, quite wondrously, the looming sword of damocles never seems to strike, the tunes somehow always maintain their fragile equilibrium. The ability to pull that shit off already kinda struck me as their superpower on the previous Hyper At The Gates Of Dawn LP released earlier this year and i think it holds even more true here, a rare quality i previously found in early works by the likes of Rat Columns and The Molds over a decade ago and, maybe, the comparatively straightforward Psych Pop nuggets of Blank Realm’s 2014 Grassed In LP which, then again, brings us back full circle on the aforementioned Flying Nun vibes.
