I'm a bit short on time this week so here's just a quick digest of quirky punk releases with varying degrees of egg-ish-ness of which these three particularly stuck out to me. For starters, there are the comparatively rough sounds of Athens, Georgia group Mr. [Redacted] whose tunes rapidly alternate between the parameters of a hard-/art-/weirdcore sound not entirely dissimilar to groups like Judy & The Jerks, Warm Bodies, Sniffany & The Nits, and the more egg-intensive sounds of early Snooper, Print Head, Awful and early Skull Cult. If you're more interested in classic egg punk territory, you may get tons of enjoyment out of the new Tape by Lovebomb from Hildesheim, Germany (man, the krautwürstle are really punching above their weight this week, aren't they?), wo deliver a densly packed bundle of snappy textbook eggpunk goodness most similar to shit á la Prison Affair, Beer, Winky Frown, Molbo and Goblin Daycare. If you prefer it more weird and Lo-Fi, try the new one of Leipzig (again!) group TTTTurbo whose recorded output's overall aesthetic is the sonic equivalent of an n-th generation document that's been xeroxed a couple times too many - beneath a thick layer of burnt monochrome pixels and copy-of-a-copy xerographic grime there's plenty stuff left to the imagination but nonetheless you can't escape the ridiculous appeal of the catchy bubblegum pop nuggets buried in there.
Quirky LoFi-ish toy synth punk goodness from Cleveland, Ohio dude Emmett O'Connor who may already be a familiar figure to some as a member of Archie and the Bunkers and MK Ultras. Now on this solo longplaying effort he's creating a warm, rich and full sound out of minimal means, poured into a number of strikingly simple but infallibly excellent power pop tunes that often have the feel a slightly sedated, toned-down and bedroom-dwelling budget version of Digital Leather's most catchy pop moments.
With the recent Cruelster LP still quite hot out of the oven, here's the newest artifact of another Nathan Ward-fronted group already, the significantly more angular and methodical yet unmistakably related Knowso, whose recent Optimism / Foot Of Pride cassingle had also landed just mere weeks ago. As usual this shit is operating pretty much on the bleeding edge of repetitive post- and art punk weirdness, performed by a bunch of flawlessly rotating, well-greased man machines. Really i can't think of many other bands able to present such rigid and choppy compositions with such a frictionless drive and unbroken momentum. That's not to say their music weren't also catchy as fuck most of the time and especially in the second half here, tunes like Consumer Talk and Panopticon show them expanding on their melodic undercurrents for some of their most immediately striking and accessible tunes so far.
Man, it must have been ages since we last heard of this Philadelphia group, which for a long time has been one of the probably less then ten bands you could plausibly qualify as "pop punk" that doesn't make me desperately flee the room in a matter of seconds. Dark Thoughts still prove they're capable of pulling off that impossible trick and all it takes them to do so is one of the most beefy yet slick garage punk sounds around, a feisty, determined performance and a perfect hit ratio when it comes to simple, tried-and-tested but always perfectly to-the-point punk songcraft.
And again, there's two New Snarewaves releases already! Not only did a digital EP drop like two weeks ago, there's also a new cassingle via Knuckles on Stun with an epic length of exactly one minute on which you'll have to make up your own mind about whether or not it's worth shelling out four-and-a-half USD for the running time equivalent of three-fifths your average punk tune. Anyway, as usual these are a bunch of excellent new burst of quite singular and eccentric, blown-out garage-/synth-/electro punk that's equally simple, catchy and explosive.
Tom Lyngcoln, previously probably best known for his old groups Pale Heads and The Nation Blue, really hit upon something special with his 2020 solo LP Raging Head and its larger-than-life dramas combining oldschool postcore with rustic americana elements, condensed down to fit into a super-economic, minimal footprint. So now we get to witness his newest band and kind of a spiritual successor to that one-off project, featuring further familiar faces like the garage punk supreme being that is Jackson Reid Briggs (currently of Split System), Callum Foley of The Blinds, The Stevens (he also played on Raging Head) and old gun Jay Jones, who had also provided the drum recordings Raging Head was built around and who apparently has played in a shit-ton of groups all the way since the mid-'90s that i'm just a bit too young to remember. Most of all it's still Lyngcoln's own distinct handwriting that's front and center here though, with the whole thing playing out like a considerably rougher spin on his solo LP, more spontaneous and immediate, compraratively messy and cluttered in a good way. There's one other thing i'm reminded of a little here and that's the bands of Atlanta's Josh Feigert and particularly his more recent groups like Uniform, Glittering Insects and Mother's Milk.
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.
