Austin, Texas group D.A.R.Y.L. had made a strong impression already with last year's Rock N Roll High School mini-LP and now build on that same foundation of synth-enhanced fuzz punk, noise pop and garage punk to even greater effect with their second release. Below the thick layer of blown-out, sledghammer sound aesthetics you'll find a perfect track record of simple, dangerously catchy tunes and melodies, a way broader stylistic variety and much improved songwriting qualities compared to the, at times, still somewhat one-dimensional vibes of the debut. This now kinda sounds like only one half Buck Biloxi / Giorgio Murderer and the other half smelling of Gobs and Exwhite... or Booji Boys, Dadgad maybe? Everyhing about that mixture sounds so fucking right to me!
England's Noise Merchant Records just reissued this Spokane, Washington group's debut tape which i've somehow either missed or stupidly ignored last winter. On it, they inject some slight hint of early Superchunk or Dinosaur Jr into an overall sound more in alignment with 1st- and 2nd-wave emocore, getting all the basics right at reproducing the genre's tropes and conventions that made it awesome in the first place while avoiding all the pitfalls that would make it a fucking joke and a tired cliché later on, while the songwriting chops on display here are somewhat basic but confident and sure-footed enough to keep you engaged, even if Puddy Knife won't add anything new to the genre here rather than reminding us of how much fun and joy you could get out of it in its earlier days and still can to this day, once you strip it of its acquired baggage of clownish mall punk cosplay and performative self-pity.
Typically excellent new fodder from some of my favorite post punk weirdos. The first track Optimism on this new Cassingle by the Cleveland, Ohio group encapsulates all the hallmarks of their angular brand of post punk into a compact and super-catchy little package while Foot Of Pride is a somewhat more ambitious, sprawling affair which - with its mid-tempo pace and uncharactaristically expansive length of over five minutes - still doesn't ever come close to overstaying its welcome thanks to its understated but effective slow-burn dramaturgy and a performance every bit as sharp and precise as anything this one-of-a-kind group has done before.
Their rather Lo-Fi 2024 Demo was pure bliss already and now we get to behold the first more polished recordings of the NYC group on this new digital 2-track single, presenting them in a somewhat different light with less of a pronounced garage vibe, instead being more reminiscent of the more indie rock-ish, melodic leaning ends of the '80s SST Records spectrum and loosely related shit, somewhere inbetween the likes of mid-career Hüsker Dü, early Dinosaur Jr., Man Sized Action, a hint of Angst maybe too. In that regard, and especially strongly in the undeniable über-hit Combat Zone (Left For Dead), these tunes remind me a lot of the incredible first Milk Music EP.
Big Break of Sheffield, UK previously made some waves with two excellent EPs of both pissed and quirky garage punk in 2021/'22, later compiled and expanded into a full LP in 2023. Their newest EP now consolidates that strong impression with another neat grab bag of tunes of an overall slightly more quirky and uplifting quality. While the opening track Prototype excells as a straightforward no-frills punk tune, The Goon is pretty much the opposite, having a bit of an egg-ish vibe goin' on. Wearing a Wire then reminds me of the garage punk minimalism of acts like The UV Race, Eddy Current Supprission Ring, Sauna Youth and Tyvek. Then at last, the closing track The Eunuch, with its sleazy growls right at the beginning and some ultra cheesy synth action feels kinda like a quirked-up Ex-Cult gone gloriously off the rails.
Toronto group Eye Ball had made myself - and probably everyone else listening - hungry for more of their shit with their two digital 2-track singles last year, which then got compiled into a four-track tape pretty soon after that. Now we get their first full LP worth of material and the previous comparisons to the likes of Marked Men, Radioactivity, Sonic Avenues and maybe early Sweet Reaper still hold mostly true, but there's so much more going on here too with most of these tunes having a lot more grit and a rougher edge to them, a more determined attack. Don't worry, there's still plenty of hooks and melodies to go around and the thing is packed with hits, but you know something's cooking when right out of the gate the album greets us with a pretty hardcore-ish title tune and subsequently, sometimes seems to channel the the vigorous thrust of previous-decade garage punk acts like Sauna Youth and early Tyvek. The one-two punch consisting of Road Pig and Bruise for a Birthmark almost has a bit of a Cruelster-esque energy and of even more recent stuff, these sogs had me thinking of The Dumpies a lot. Quality shit, no doubt!
This Copenhagen-based group once again channels that same widescreen thrill and excitement that already made their 2023 debut LP stand out from the great bulk of ambitious post punk acts and all of it is still in place here - the desperate, existential drama reminiscent of early Iceage, Lower and other groups that cropped up in their wake, the omnipresent cowpunk undercurrents, the equally melodic and elaborate arrangements and structures that call to mind the first couple of Protomartyr EPs, coupled with the urgency and immediacy of early White Lung - while at the same time, these tunes come across as ever-so-slightly more streamlined, refined in a careful, gradual way resulting in yet another quite unique and miles-above-average punk record.
Last December's Debut EP Shoot Me I'm Plain of this Chico, California group was such a thorougly pleasant surprise coming pretty much out of nowhere and i actually have absolutely nothing new to say now about their first full length record which has just dropped. Once again, this is an insanely appealing and more than just competent variant of that last-decade schtick made up of elements of super-catchy fuzz punk, noise pop and psychedelic surf vibes. A sound that's become a bit scarce in more recent years but keeps cropping up every now and then in the most unlikely places, like stubborn weeds proving themselves hard to root out entirely by an unsympathetic zeitgeist. Think early Wavves, Male Bonding, No Age, early Terry Malts or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! in addition to such surfboard-wielding indie- and psych rockers á la Crystal Stilts, Surfer Blood and The Fresh And Onlys. That kind of shit.
I had kind of a difficult time getting into the previous EP of Buffalo, New York punks Science Man which, with its at times kinda generic and metal-ish, mosh-y riffing, sometimes felt a bit like the the group couldn't quite match up their great ambition with an appropriate amount of substance. Their newest LP is way more up my alley though with their mixture of noise-infused, sludgy hard- and postcore sounding quite a bit more organic and less forced, driven by inventive, catchy hooks and elaborate song structures that carry with them a sense of danger and unpredictability without ever feeling randomly thrown together. These tunes show amounts of deliberation, intent and directionality that i found missing on their last one is what i'm trying to say here.
New eggpunk fun from Hamburg, Germany which - as far as the german scene is concerned - i'm gonna try to describe as a mix of Pisse and Egg Idiot with added flavors of international acts á la Prison Affair, Winky Frown, Kowboje and Beer. Some other curious shit is going on here as well though, for example with sort of a dungeon vibe in Spuren and Knight having some of the slightly goth-ish aura of both early and recent Powerplant.
