Germ House - Germ House

The newest EP of Rhode Is­land one-man-band Germ House aka Justin Hub­bard car­ries an­oth­er strong batch of songs in their trade­mark jux­ta­po­si­tion of rus­tic post punk ab­strac­tion and a folky un­der­cur­rent. Es­pe­cial­ly in the first half, these songs feel a tad more de­vel­oped than usu­al this time while still re­tain­ing their over­all quirk­i­ness and their min­i­mal­ist, frag­men­tary charme.

Al­bum-Stream →

Pigeon - Permanent Quest​ /​ ​Riged

Sev­en more inch­es of undi­lut­ed great­ness from Berlin post punk stal­warts Pi­geon. The a-side is a tur­bocharged strem­roller just as catchy as it's abra­sive while the b-side track goes a more cum­ber­some, slow and stub­born route to a no less pul­ver­iz­ing ef­fect.

Pisse - Lambada

I'm sure everyone's al­ready tak­en no­tice, but i can't leave that one out here, a new re­lease by the on­ly ger­man punk group i've ever heard of. In a nut­shell, Pisse are still very much Pisse (and yes, that is in­deed the ger­man word for piss), their jet of yel­low liq­uid still be­ing very pre­cise­ly fo­cused on the var­i­ous process­es and phe­nom­e­na in­volved in the grad­ual crush­ing of the hu­man soul in that so­ci­ety of ours while not spar­ing the punk scene their due amount of ridicule ei­ther. Their mu­sic on the fringes of post- and garage punk ain't noth­ing to be em­bar­rassed about ei­ther, even in the clos­ing track Fa­vorit, which drags some Sui­cide-es­que synth min­i­mal­ism through a de­cid­ed­ly ger­man schlager hell.

Al­bum-Stream →

Green/​Blue - Paper Thin

This project re­volv­ing around Jim Bla­ha (The Blind Shake, Jim and the French Vanil­la) and An­nie Spar­rows (So­vi­ettes, Awe­some Snakes) sounds quite un­like any of Jim Blaha's oth­er groups that i'm aware of on their sec­ond LP, these songs with­out ex­cep­tion hav­ing a dreamy, melan­choly pow­er pop vibe and an un­like­ly post punk edge to them - kin­da like a mix be­tween Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Mind Spi­ders and a slight­ly mut­ed The Es­tranged fused to­geth­er by rock sol­id song­writ­ing chops.

Al­bum-Stream →

Life Forms - Life Forms

A strong lit­tle batch of melod­ic garage punk by some UK group - fans of stuff like Ra­dioac­tic­i­ty, Sweet Reaper, Ex-White, Boo­ji Boys, Telecult, Steve Adamyk Band or Son­ic Av­enues lis­ten up!

Al­bum-Stream →

Ambulanz - Ambulanz

The Leipzig scene de­liv­ers re­li­able qual­i­ty once again with this EP made up of hy­per­ac­tive garage-/post punk bas­tardiza­tions call­ing to mind a clus­ter of groups á la Ony­on, Pat­ti, Big Bop­per, Warm Red, Cat Scan, Rogue… a bit of Ex-Cult & Con­stant Mon­grel, maybe??

Al­bum-Stream →

Cult Objects - Secrets of Pain​-​Free Living

The de­but Al­bum of this Philadel­phia group is, in a word, fuck­ing im­pres­sive. Ver­sa­tile, in­ven­tive post punk this is, mov­ing about somwhere in­be­tween the repet­i­tive ab­strac­tion of Nots, the no-bull­shit di­rect at­tack of Lié, grooves, noise erup­tions and melod­ic tex­tures rem­i­nis­cent of ear­ly Pro­tomar­tyr, some sparkling Son­ic Youth-es­que walls of noise and the re­lent­less propul­sion of Ner­vosas, then clos­ing out the al­bum with a jam en­veloped in a thick psy­che­del­ic haze.

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Dehidratált Fejek - Igyad Azt Menjünk

Damn, i thought i was done blog­ging for the week and then this un­ex­pect­ed lit­tle gem of crude and sham­bol­ic noise by a Bu­dapest group crops up last minute, their sound strik­ing me as a pe­cu­liar fu­sion of odd­ball garage punk in the Ed­dy Cur­rent Sup­pres­sion Ring and UV Race vein with sim­i­lar­ly weird acts in the post punk and old­school in­die rock field such as Tree­house, Kitchen's Floor, The Molds and City Yelps.

Al­bum-Stream →

The Wilful Boys - World Ward Word Sword

Here's an­oth­er one i al­most missed. The newest LP by New York's Wil­ful Boys de­liv­ers ten tight blows of noise rock ob­vi­ous­ly pulling lots of in­spi­ra­tion from the clas­sic sludge-heavy Am­Rep era - Cows, es­pe­cial­ly - plus maybe a few touch­es of U-Men, Feed­time and 80's Sci­en­tists… while sound­ing per­fect­ly con­tem­po­rary at the same time, some­times strik­ing a sim­i­lar chord to groups such as Help!, Tu­nic, John (Timest­wo), USA Nails or Death Pan­els.

Al­bum-Stream →

Ex-Gold - We Are Good

I al­most over­looked this beau­ty which ap­pears to have been out for a cou­ple months al­ready. Knoxville's Ex-Gold had put out a de­light­ful de­but EP in 2018, a cou­ple of whose songs have al­so been re-record­ed for this new one while the new tracks seam­less­ly con­tin­ue the ex­cel­lence of their de­but. That means more quirky pow­er­pop and garage punk with both a slight '77- and an old­school in­die rock touch. The best com­par­i­son i can come up with right now are UK wise­crack­ers Pro­to Id­iot but fans of stuff like Tom­my and the Com­mies, Bad Sports, Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Sweet Reaper, Cor­ner Boys or Steve Adamyk Band should al­so get a kick out of this.

Al­bum-Stream →