This exquisitely butt-whooping debut album by Austin, Texas dude Bryan Alchamaa aka Outside View has a whole 15-song all-killer-no-filler package of catchy, partly synth-enhanced and just slightly ’77-leaning garage tunes in store for us of which some kinda resemble the straightforward simplicity of Buck Biloxi, The Spits, Bart and the Brats, while others channel the sparkling hymns by the likes of Why Bother?, Deletions, Digital Leather and Lost Sounds.
Now that’s some fucking brilliant shit! On their debut EP, this swedish group creates the sort of monotonous oldschool post punk that doesn’t invent anything new but instead excells all the way in anything they do, with every song on this thing perfectly hitting the spot in a manner equally straightforward and elegant, expertly propelled forward, taking cues from Wire, MX-80 and Crass when it comes to old genre royalty and groups like Nag, Institute from more recent times… also, a hint of The Estranged in the closing track. Simple as that and so, so good!
After the overflowing bucket of catchy power pop fun that was the debut LP of this australian dude who’s also playing in such high caliber acts as R.M.F.C. and Gee Tee, his newest album delivers more of the same basic goodness while improving on it in all aspects across the board and where previously his tunes may have come across as a bit too uniform, samey and clincal at times, on this one his impeccable songwriting chops shine all the brighter helped along by a perfectly fitting production (also: actual drums, finally!) striking just the right balance between gunk and polish to make his simple garage-/fuzz pop tunes sparkle with joy and energy.
The six tracks of this Leeds, UK group’s debut LP take themselves plenty of time to allow for their cold and analytic post punk grooves and textures to sink in and do their work with steady, sprawling, kraut-ish repetition, poured into an overall sonic form that sorta reminds me of postcore- and noise rock leaning acts like John (timestwo), Metz, Cool Jerks and early Greys as much as post punk groups of the Criminal Code and The Cowboy kind, but most of all i’m sensing a lot of kinship with the recent Machiavellian Art LP with these songs kinda playing out like a sped-up, streamlined version of that shit.
To me, previous releases of Mason City, Iowa’s Why Bother? have usually been a somewhat hit-and-miss kind of affair, although the undeniable highlights no doubt made up for any instance in which the songwriting was just a tad too undercooked or the performance just didn’t quite spark. Over time their hits-to-duds ratio has certainly improved though and their newest offering is hands down their strongest set of new catchy-as-fuck tunes so far, as usual melting strikingly simple ’77 vibes, scraps of power pop and plenty of contemporary garage- and synth punk into an impressive succession of unstoppable hooks and melodies with quite a bit of stylictic breadth.
This neat new tape by a Los Angeles group has some deliciously noisy and hyperactive synth-/electro punk for us that transports some vague feel of the genre’s ’70s/’80s classics while exact matches with any of those seem kinda elusive, although i’d say Primitive Calculators and Nervous Gender are reasonably close comparisons. Above that, you may draw similarly diffuse connections to recent groups, with certain moments, bits and pieces evoking a bunch of acts as diverse as Lost Packages, ISS, Spyroids, Skull Cult and Freak Genes, plus just a bit of hybrid garage-/post punk á la Tyvek and Shark Toys in more guitar-centered tracks like Ford Branca.
An awesome dungeon-themed artifact comes to us from a Montreal group who take a major leap from their more purist black metal-leaning 2020 debut tape to a more ambitious punk-flavored endeavor that also aligns pretty well with the more blackened subsection of the current dungeon punk landscape, most notable last winter’s Bloody Keep LP and the likes of Warlock Corpse or blackened synth punks Drýsildjöfull, though Conifère certainly put their very own flavor on their epic crusades by way of a strong late nineties post- and emocore undercurrent being the common thread running all the way through this tape.
The successor to these Melbourne punks’ excellent car-themed EP from past December has them considerably streamlining and improving the structural foundation of their songs while also diversifying their musical spectrum, giving them a more post punk-ish feel overall yet this is also the most noisy and concentrated attack we’ve heard of them so far, which even holds true in the case of the midtempo post punk jam TV Screen, while closing track Tough Cunt still closes things out with a bit of hardcore energy akin to their previous material. Anyway, i’m reminded of so much goodness of the last decade-plus by the likes of Romance, Vexx, Cel Ray, Gen Pop, Warp, Downtown Boys, Fugitive Bubble and Warm Bodies just to name a few… plus maybe just a hint of old aussie noise rock / post punk greats Fungus Brains? Yeah, this is some highly combustible shit for sure!
Following up on their stellar previous EP, this (probably) Austin, Texas group delivers a way more crude and unpolished – yet no less exciting – batch of new tunes located in the more eccentric spheres of the garage-/synth-/eggpunk spectrum. Less catchy overall but more high-energy instead, this makes for a more than serviceable successor to a plainly sensational record that’s been a decidedly tough act to follow anyway and even as the lesser of the two, it’s still a freakin’ increadible bit of eccentric noise to be perfectly honest.
Somehow the kids appear to be into shoegaze again in recent years, yet there hasn’t been all that much in the recent wave that i could really get excited about as most contemporary acts seem perfectly content with creating a pleasant but completely interchangeable bed of light ambient noise to fall asleep in, while lacking the tunes and noise, the punk propulsion and energy of previous generations. A completely different beast though is this second EP of Philadelphia group Mopar Stars, reviving in particular the spirit of the likes of Swervedriver, Pale Saints and early Catherine Wheel while also extending their sonic palette with flourishes of elegant, classic late seventies / early eighties power pop songwriting excellence and not least i’m positively reminded a lot of the early, late-eighties works of UK noise pop act Mega City Four.
