Okay… if i’m not mistaken this new Melbourne-based project is one dude who’s also in Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice and Kitchen People and on his debut LP under the JJ Sizza moniker he creates a garage-/synth punk sound that feels like a perfect middle ground inbetween the olschool Ausmuteants playbook and a more contemporaneous-feeling eggpunk-ish vibe. This shit sticks ‘cos it simply has all the catchy song goodnes on board needed to make that happen. Nothing new under the sun but plenty of intoxicating quality shit goin’ on here nonetheless!
After an already thoroughly enjoyable debut EP in 2023, this Kansas City group’s newest LP turns out to be even more up my freakin’ alley with its surprisingly flexible, shapeshifting noise attacks in which some amount of oldschool US west coast style meets hints of early Minutemen and such (proto-) postcore and (proto-) noise rock acts like Flipper, Really Red and Saccharine Trust, whose unconventional styles get mutated here into some kind of KBD-drenched garage punk vibe that may be just as well described using a number of more contemporary references of the Launcher, Mystic Inane, Cutup, Fugitive Bubble, Rolex, Cucuy and Flea Collar type.
In recent years, french Oi! has come to stand for an unlikely level of excellence in a genre that i wouldn’t have put much stock in just over a decade ago. Admittedly, the overall parameters of its current incarnation can still feel a bit samey and formulaic but that’s certainly not an attribute i’d pin on this group from Nantes, whose second full length effort starts out kinda oldschool-ish with a somewhat Gun Club-esque garage vibe and another great but kinda genre-standard punk tune before their songs subsequently take on a more independent and unique quality, more thoroughly exploring – and eking just enough variety out of – the (to be fair, not exactly unlimited) possibilities of the contemporary garage-/Oi!-/post punk framework with enough song-based oomph under the hood to never get tedious for a second.
Quality german language garage punk sure ain’t the most abundant thing around but this Ludwigsburg dude or group pulls of this unlikely marvel effortlessly on their new digital 2-track single, each tune an instant hit and future genre classic in their own right with the first one having some ever-so-subtle egg-ish quality while the vocal harmonies and guitar work remind me positively of the most recent Dumpies and Eye Ball records, while the more melancholy second tune embeds those same qualities in an overall vibe highly reminiscent of Marked Men and Radioactivity. No kidding, that’s exactly how good this shit really is.
Jug & The Bugs of Vernon Township, New Jersey have been messing about for a good while by now, along the way having dumped tons of stuff on Bandcamp in varying flavors of garage punk and even the occasional bit of abstract no-wave-ish noise, all of it ranging from rather traditional and oldschool to kinda artsy and elaborate. Their newest LP though feels like the exact moment in which the group has found something of their own voice, transcending their fast-and-loose garage punk roots. And indeed these guys aren’t fucking around here in a tightly focused group effort, some comparatively polished sounding production values putting these elegantly crafted little art punk dramas in just the right light. Right out of the gate the opening track Your World radiates a distinct vibe á la Wire-meets-Dead Boys. It’s Wire in particular though who will come to mind more than just once over the course of this record, in addition to such powerhouses of that whole garage-/art-/post punk axis like Marbled Eye, Ex Cult, fairly recent Institute, Tyvek, Shark Toys, Andy Human & The Reptoids, R.M.F.C., Motorbike… and on top of that, in the second half there’s some unmistakable power pop bent taking hold in tunes like Delivery and Away Today. So yeah this is quality shit no doubt.
New shit from that Cleveland, Ohio axis of smartypants post- and garage punk centering around Cruelster, Perverts Again, Knowso and The Carp, the linking element to each of them being the distinctive “sprechgesang” vocals of Nathan Ward. Now Cruelster have always been the most fun and straightforward rockin’-out entity of the bunch and their newest LP is no exception to that, which isn’t to say by any means that their compact little art punk/-core bursts were any less ambitious, inventive and elaborate… only that Cruelster appears to focus the most on embedding and quantizing (yeah, quantization is a word that springs to mind a lot with any of these groups) their angular zig-zagging hooks into a reasonably friction-less garage- and hardcore punk framework. Fairly smart shit that only sounds kinda dumb – the best of two opposing worlds!
Philadelphia’s TVO already stuck out from the pack on their previous EPs with a make of post- and garage punk that seemed to take uncommon inspiration from a number of groups of the proto-grunge and proto-noise rock era with clear echoes of U-Men, Scientists, early Mudhoney, Feedtime, Fungus Brains, Scratch Acid and X (AUS), to name just a few of the usual suspects. Their new full length debut still has all of the same goodness on board while also gradually steering their ship into a somewhat unexpected direction by drenching their songs in a generous helping somewhat sleazed-up, bluesy rock’n’roll and what can i say, without exception they deliver the songs and tight-ass performances here to make the shit stick and indeed these tunes are a marked jump forward for the group, showcasing an exceptionally tight grip on their always dead-on songwriting skills.
Always a welcome kickass affair, new material by Jake Sprecher of Terry Malts fame and his current band/project The Wind-Ups, which went off with a bang in 2021 with the incredible Try Not To Think LP and has since then not changed a whole lot but also never disappointed – a constant, reliable level of quality that persists through their third longplayer too, still making it hard not to be instantly enchanted by their timeless garage rock and bubblegum pop compositions taking on a delightfully rustic and fuzz-laden sonic form of blown-out noise pop and garage punk.
Digital Hotdogs brings us the newest crime of Austin, Texas cowpunk wrecking crew Leche which, way more than any of their previous works, reminds me quite a bit of another Digital Hotdogs mainstay, Trashdog, not so much in terms of their actual sound and more in their hyperactive, disjointed anything-goes approach dismissing or subverting any established rules and conceptions of genre, structure, continuity, reality itself… so yeah this is yet another glorious genre-bending, fragmented mess that can feel like a bit too much of everything at times. But once you filtered your way thruough all the stuff, there’s a really neat single LP hidden in this seemingly indiscriminate dump of a double LP’s worth of material. This is maybe not so much (Trashdog’s) Weezer’s Blue Album and more (Leche’s) The Beatles’ White Album – a bit too long, kinda messy, in seemingly random sequence and it shouldn’t be judged by its weakest parts.
This Cleveland, Ohio group’s second EP strikes all the right chords with me after ther 2023 Debut already made a strong first impression, but this new one is another level of insanity altogether for their sonic assault of quirky & rowdy hardcore- and, occasionally, post punk wrapped in a thick layer of grimy Flipper-esque noise texture that calls to mind pretty much any modern-day genre classic by the likes of Stinkhole, Launcher, Mystic Inane, early Soupcans, Dollhouse, Lumpy and the Dumpers, Vulture Shit and Big Bopper, just to name a couple of the more obvlous ones.
