The follow-up to last year's sensational debut tape AN/AL by new york garage punk wizard Jean Mignon somewhat dials down the stylistic variety factor but absolutely makes up for it by considerably upping the average energy level of his straightforward punk smashers, propelled forward by an unstoppable, combustive drive with more than just a little undercurrent of proto punk in general and the '74-'77 New York scene in particular.
A bucketload of unhealthy sugary joy, the second EP by this NY act delivering a quirky and catchy mix of synth- and garage-, art- and eggpunk that skillfully and precisely hits kind of a sweet spot inbetween the sonic worlds of, say, Metdog, Smirk and Cherry Cheeks, more or less. Good shit!
My petty attempts at writing about music might've been even worse 10+ years ago than they still are in the present but at least there's little need for me being too embarrassed about most of the music i've picked back then. Case in point, the new LP of italian group Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, the first new music after six to seven years of silence by the group that had the questionable honor of being the subject of the very first 12XU blog post ever (the german language section that is, which goes back to the year 2013 rather than the english section which is less than half as old). Despite their slow pace of output you can't accuse them of lacking staying power, that's for sure! Their sound's progression over the years makes perfect sense to me as well, their excellent 2013 Forever Young LP kinda channeling the bygone late 2000s / early 2010s era of noise pop and fuzz punk groups á la No Age, Wavves and Male Bonding, which then morphed into a more relaxed, indie rock-leaning vibe with on their 2017 album Corners. With this new one, they finally settle into some ultra-classic shoegaze territory with just a hint of post grunge added to the mix, Bailterspace and Swervedriver being the the best comparison i can come up with. Here they slow things down even further without ever coming across as sleepy or boring - it takes a rare amount of elaborate construction work and song-crafting prowess to pull this shit off successfully and these italians deliver on it in droves, more than any other group has done in recent years as it's been a rather sad decade for the genre so far if you ask me, in which most of these groups certainly have all their effect pedals in place while lacking the songs, energy and vision to do anything for me other than gently lulling me to sleep. This one, it sounds kinda oldschool while absolutely not Slowdive-ish and that's like a breath of fresh air to me in these days.
It took the Sydney group like a half decade to come up with their third EP but here it finally is in all its glory and spectacle. Their very own fusion of noise rock, hard- and postcore has retained every bit of their frantic energy while mixing shit up just enough to keep things interesting, for example in Shame Bomb, in which they conjure up a previously unheard sense of melancholy. Other times, their speeds and levels of devastation are reaching the explosive force of their debut EP in songs such as Level Skipper and Prick in the Franger, after the slightly more forgiving previous Safe Word EP, while tracks like Night Shift Blues once again supercharge all the grime and dirt of oldschool Amphetamine Repile-style riffing with a relentless hardcore attack.
A new EP by the San Antonio, Texas group and as always i'm happy to say that Sex Mex still sound very much like Sex Mex, their mixture of garage- and synth punk, noise- and power pop transporting the aesthetics of only the most catchy and melodic artifacts out of the whole Reatard era. Reliable shit that doesn't try anything funny and instead just delivers on the hooks!
The EP suffers from non-embeddable bandcamp disease, but you can listen to the whole thing over at their bandcamp page.
The second EP by this San Francisco group, coming to us by way of the weirdo suits at the headquarters of Discontinuous Innovation Inc., marks a quite impressive step up in energy, sophistication, elegance and stylistic variety after their already perfectly enjoyable debut cassingle in 2020. In the year 2024, their quirky and chaotic mix of postcore, post- and art punk with just a smidge of garage punk thrown in for good measure is still gonna evoke universally favorable comparisons to quirky noisemakers in the vein of Rolex, Patti, Reality Group, Big Bopper, Warm Bodies, Uranium Club and Brandy.
New shit by these Olympia, Washington Lo-Fi punks and you kinda know what's gonna hit you: More of that deliciously blown out and catchy-as-fuck garage-/electro/fuzz punk dementia for the moderately desensitized mind, hellbent on damaging your speakers, corrupting your soul, spilling your booze and puking on your carpet. Very negative influence these kids, stay away!
Jake Robertson's Alien Nosejob usually finds some way to subvert our expectations and their newest 7", coming to us as usual via Anti Fade Records, ain't no exception in that regard! The Executioner surprises with what might easily be the most post punk the group has ever sounded as cold and raw electric beats get welded to an equally rigid construct of repetitive guitar riffs, combining into a slightly industrial-ish overall vibe. West Side Story then is closer to the familiar and beloved standard Alien Nosejob formula, a straightforward yet elegant garage punk smasher based on a single exquisite riff that could just go on forever but conveniently gets faded out in time before it can cause any lasting (hearing-) damage.
Following up on their much rougher, hardcore-leaning International Heartthrob EP of last year, Indiana's Spewed Brain take their sound into a catchier, slightly egg-ish direction on their new LP while staying delightfully fucked-up and unpredictable, at different times reminding me of groups as diverse as, say, Trauma Harness, Print Head, Exwhite, The Gobs, Snooper, Rolex, Witch Piss or Slimex.
Oh look, it's that mysterious dude again who also goes by such names as Zhoop, Djinn, Nightman, Feed, Brundle and even more disguises i can't recall right now. As usual he does exactly one thing on here and he gets it right every single time - five excellent no-frills minimalist detonations on the intersection of garage-, hardcore- and fuzz punk.
