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.
Less than a year after this New Jersy dude's first record as a full-band incarnation overloaded the senses and blasted a respectable hole in the floor, the plain album title "Reckless Randy 2" now denotes the second longplaying artifact as a solo artist again and just like on his 2022 self-titled (solo-) debut LP, the overall pace on here is a good bit more relaxed and leisurely than than the mayhem of his united wrecking crew and you know what, that doesn't matter much 'cos the dude knows a thing or two about crafting kinda simple but wickedly catchy and effective garage tunes that hit hard enough just by themselves and could easily withstand an even more sleepy presentation. That said, i do hope to hear at some point what the whole crew is gonna transform this material into.
A curious little creature, this new tape coming to us courtesy of the reliably weird and brilliant - and if you ask me, wildly under-appreciated - NY label Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The second tape by this act of mysterious origin is some gloriously old-fashioned minimalist synth punk action that on one hand channels some of the old '80s underground greats like Nervous Gender, Units, Visitors, Screamers, Primitive Calculators or Marginal Man, but also the hypnotic, scrappy charm of early John Carpenter soundtracks and in the current landscape, they kinda fit in with such groups as Lost Packages, Abscam or some particular incarnations of Freak Genes.
Yet another kickass split 7" coming to us via Goodbye Boozy records. On it, Leipzig, Germany group Autobahns set off one oldschool hardcore smasher followed by an angular garage punk hit with a slightly southern-ish flavor. Speaking of southern-ish - that is exactly one of the garage punk sub-niches Elvis 2 have been occupying for just over a year now and the two new songs of the australian garage-/fuzz punk group are more of that addictive shit that had us begging for more pretty much ever since their first digital single cropped up on bandcamp, an Elvis 2-shaped hole in our hearts which their recent debut LP still ain't nearly enough to fully occupy.
Eight explosive bursts of equally rough and smart, inventive and versatile hardcore punk are what we're in for on this californian group's debut EP, which on one hand bears some similarity to such oldschool-HC-meets-garage-punk groups like Strutter, Headcheese, early Electric Chair, Insane Urge and Necron 9 but then fuses that aesthetic with the unpredictability and structured chaos of more quirky out-of-the-box thinking groups á la Mystic Inane, Cucuy, Acrylics, Big Bopper and Rolex.
Two titans of contemporary garage-/synth-/eggpunk join forces once again for a new Goodbye Boozy 7" that combines three new tunes with the tracks from 2023's Genetic Southern Hemisphere Christmas EP and what can i say, that shit sounds pretty much like what you'd imagine a Busted Head Racket & Billiam collaboration to sound like which is to say absolutely glorious like the best of both worlds squared and bearing the unique signatures of two of the australian garage underground's brightest creative spirits.
This sheffield dude delighted in 2020/'21 with three excellent EPs of covid lockdown-spawned melodic garage punk and it appears these four tunes have also been languishing on some hard drive in half-finished form since back then and have only recently been given the finishing touches. So no surprises here really - these songs feel like a seamless continuation of that same greatness, once again taking the form of super-catchy no-frills punk tunes that seem to have equal amounts of Buzzcocks and solo-era Jay Reatard in them as well as the high-impact garage blasts of Kid Chrome and, most recently, the simple, fuzzed-out garage-/noise pop hymns of Sex Mex.
I think the demo of this NYC group is some pretty fucking brilliant shit. The charmingly rustic Lo-Fi recording can't do anything really to obscure the obvious qualities of their spin on equally catchy and hard-hitting fuzz- and garage punk that at first glance radiates a pronounced Wipers-meet-KBD-esque vibe with some added Saints, Buzzcocks and Dead Boys flair but there's more under the hood than first meets the eye as some closer observation reveals some neat little flourishes and details, like a bit of a southern rock flavor, the kind we've recently heard on that Elvis 2 LP while the forceful, tight-ass presentation and the vocalist's pissed of bark call to mind the likes of Split System and Punter. In other moments, you may draw some plausible comparisons to the frantic post punk of Nevosas or the rougher end of the Booji Boys spectrum.
