Jean Mignon - AN/​AL

Garage Punk with a weird the­mat­ic fix­a­tion on mope­ds and but­t­holes by some New York dude which sounds a lot like his city ca. '73-'77, in­hab­it­ing a son­ic space some­where in­be­tween the pro­to- and ear­ly punk of the NY Dolls, Mod­ern Lovers and Dead Boys, with fur­ther echoes of the wider ear­ly US scene á la Pa­gans, Black Randy and the Met­rosquad on the more re­laxed side of things as well some se­ri­ous ear­ly aus­tralian Saints- and Bird­man en­er­gy in its wilder mo­ments.

Al­bum-Stream →

Dross - Nightmare World

Sim­ple and straight­for­ward-as-fuck Garage Punk by a Lon­don group which, if you ask me, doesn't sound much like Lon­don at all, rather re­mind­ing me of a bunch of con­ti­nen­tal eu­ro­pean acts of late like Italy's Dadar, Shit­ty Life and The Dirt­i­est, Belgium's Mi­traille and Itch­es as well as amer­i­can acts á la Sore Points, Big Ba­by, maybe a hint of Sick Thoughts or (ear­ly) Hank Wood & The Ham­mer­heads.

Al­bum-Stream →

Tee Vee Repairman - What's On TV

Not long af­ter the re­cent 7" on Good­bye Boozy Records we get the first LP of Sydney's Tee Vee Re­pair­man on that oth­er garage punk pow­er­house la­bel To­tal Punk. As you might've guessed this is an­oth­er juicy treat of sim­ple and stu­pid melod­ic garage punk and pow­er pop de­light well suit­ed for fans of shit like Bad Sports, Tom­my and the Com­mies and Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys while of the dude's own oth­er projects, you might be most re­mind­ed of a sug­ar-coat­ed ver­sion of Sa­tan­ic To­gas or re­cent R.M.F.C..

Al­bum-Stream →

Day Residue - Day Residue

More awe­some shit cour­tesy of Painters Tapes by a De­troit group hav­ing a strong pro­to-grunge vibe to them that wouldn't seem out of place next to ear­ly Mud­honey, U-Men, Feed­time, X (the aus­tralian group) or 80s Sci­en­tists. Al­so you might find some traces of amer­i­can pro­to noise rock á la Flip­per, Bro­ken Tal­ent just as well as more re­cent groups rough­ly in the or­bit of TVO or Vexx in there.

Al­bum-Stream →

Class - But Who's Reading Me?

Class from Tuc­son, Ari­zona de­liv­er their strongest re­lease so far via the seem­ing­ly in­fal­li­ble Feel It Records. Their where­abouts cer­tain­ly make The Res­onars come to mind and in­deed their mas­ter­mind Matt Ren­don has been in­volved in the pro­duc­tion and fur­ther sim­i­lar­i­ties can be drawn in their some­what british in­va­sion-fu­eled brand of slight­ly psy­che­del­ic brand of garage rock, jan­gle- and pow­er pop. Class, how­ev­er, deal in a way more straight­for­ward and rougher-edged garage punk sound - the over­all vibe of Burn­ing Cash wouldn't feel out of place on the re­cent Strange At­trac­tor LP.

Al­bum-Stream →

Objections - BSA Day /​ Better Luck Next Time

A beau­ti­ful­ly out-of-fash­ion 7" by a Leeds group cre­at­ing a sound lo­cat­ed amidst the rough co­or­di­nates of math rock, post­core and noise rock, ob­vi­ous­ly pay­ing trubute pri­mar­i­ly to the 90s-to-2000s era of Dischord Records and in par­tic­u­lar to groups of the Jaw­box, Au­to­clave, Hoover, Lung­fish, Q and not U va­ri­ety.

Thee Khai Aehm - Samhainia!

More beau­ti­ful de­light­ful garage punk may­hem by the dun­geon-dwellers from Karl­sruhe, Ger­many, this time in a slight­ly less lo-fi yet per­fect­ly po­tent sound aes­thet­ic. Once again you might be re­mem­bered of acts like Strange At­trac­tor, Salamirecorder and, most of all, var­i­ous in­car­na­tions of Thee Oh Sees over the years. My Spell, then again, sounds a bit as if the lat­ter had been cross­bred with the no-wave in­fused drones of noise rock­ers Spray Paint.

Al­bum-Stream →

Sex Drive - Shopping Blitz

Oh look, one of my fa­vorite pieces of punk rock va­por­ware fi­nal­ly got re­leased! How long has it been… two years at the very least since this thing has first been teased in form of the (dig­i­tal) Un­con­trol sin­gle. Ul­ti­mate­ly it was worth the wait though as the aus­tralian group's first LP packs the same kind of sav­age garage punk as­sault we've wit­nessed on their pre­vi­ous EPs while ex­pand­ing on it fur­ther, car­ry­ing an un­ex­pect­ed­ly melan­cholic vibe through­out, best ex­em­pli­fied by the melod­ic pop smash­er Strange Mo­tel while Work and Mil­i­tary Boy re­mind me of Jack­son Reid Brig­gs & The Heaters both in terms of vibe and en­er­gy lev­els. This is al­so re­quired lis­ten­ing for fans of shit like Civic, S.U.G.A.R., Lysol, Split Sys­tem, Mi­ni Skirt, In­sti­tute and Liv­ing Eyes.

Al­bum-Stream →

Italia 90 - Living Human Treasure

A new LP by Italia 90, best kept se­cret of con­tem­po­rary british post punk, who so far have man­aged to com­plete­ly avoid as well as out­live the hype cy­cle some of their peers have been rid­ing hard over the past few years. Hard to be­lieve at this point that this is ac­tu­al­ly their first full length re­lease. Over­all, they're stay­ing true to them­selves here with­out mak­ing things too easy ei­ther for them­selves or the au­di­ence, strik­ing a del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween catchy tunes á la New Fac­to­ry, Tales From Be­yond and more cum­ber­some son­ic as­saults like Mag­da­lene and Gol­gatha. Oth­er­wise, a slight­ly Wire-es­que open­ing track gives way to a more fa­mil­iar sound­scape ow­ing a lot to the clas­sics of, among oth­ers, Swell Maps and Mem­branes, the oc­ca­sion­al hint of Crass. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might al­so draw some com­par­isons to more re­cent acts like Ex­ek, ear­ly Pro­tomar­tyr.

Al­bum-Stream →

Kudzu - Kudzu

This Greenville, South Car­oli­na group kicks up an ex­cel­lent rack­et lo­cat­ed somwhere in­be­tween the gears of garage punk, post punk and post­core bear­ing some sim­i­lar­i­tiy to more re­cent stuff á la Big Bop­per, Mys­tic Inane, Doll­house, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Cri­sis Man… just as much as to clas­sic pieces by the likes of Dri­ve Like Je­hu, Hot Snakes, Na­tion Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Mat­ter.

Al­bum-Stream →