Goon - Natural Evil

Here's an ul­tra neat at­tack made of noise-drenched hard-/post­core by a band from Den­ver, Col­orado. Think of a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of Lumpy & The Dumpers, Anx­i­ety, Cü­lo or their qua­si-suc­ces­sors Taran­tüla.

Al­bum-Stream →

Shit Giver - Meaningless /​ Transition

Shit Giver's 2017 de­but al­bum left quite an im­pres­sion on me with its am­bi­tious and ver­sa­tile vi­sion of post punk, burst­ing with ex­cen­tric ideas and un­pre­dictable song struc­tures. The L.A. group's first new mu­sic in al­most three years doesn't fail to amaze and sur­prise once again. It's their melod­ic song­writ­ing abil­i­ties that come in­to sharp fo­cus here, tak­ing shape as an ir­re­sistible mix of post punk, pow­er- and goth pop, de­vel­op­ing a catchy­ness i wasn't pre­pared for. Mean­ing­less ig­nites some un­ex­pect­ed­ly straight­for­ward pop fire­works, com­plete with a bor­der­line-cheesy sax so­lo, the kind of which a less­er song wouldn't sur­vive, but in this case i can't help but per­cieve it as a well-de­served cli­max. Tran­si­tion seam­less­ly con­tin­ues their new­found love for gloomy pop, but al­so proves that Shit Giv­er haven't lost their taste for elab­o­rate struc­tures, ei­ther.

Champion Lawnmower - Champion Lawnmower

This Van­cou­ver outfit's sec­ond tape is such a mas­sive load of fun. Their play­ful style of post punk bal­ances with ease be­tween its rough edged tex­tures and high­ly dance­able grooves, which puts their sound right in the mid­dle be­tween the ex­cen­tric punk rock of acts like Neg­a­tive Scan­ner or Twist­ed on one hand, the in­fec­tious rhythms of Slumb Par­ty or Rapid Tan on the oth­er.

Al­bum-Stream →

Sallow Pillow - Wince Meat

This ex­cel­lent De­but EP by Liverpool's Sal­low Pil­low eas­i­ly wins me over with its fla­vor of straight and ef­fec­tive, slight­ly surf-in­fused garage punk right in the vein of Black Lips, ear­ly Ty Segall or De­bate Club. You can al­so sense a con­sis­tent Gun Club vibe as well as a cer­tain post punk edge sim­i­lar to Lux­u­ry or scan­di­na­vian acts like Holo­grams and RA. And to make things com­plete, when they roll out some amer­i­cana in­flu­ences like in Wear Out The Rope i can't help but feel pos­i­tive­ly re­mind­ed of Vaguess.

Al­bum-Stream →

Luggage - Shift

With their third Al­bum, Chicago's Lug­gage de­liv­er a seam­less con­tin­u­a­tion of the qual­i­ties es­tab­lished on their 2017 ef­fort Three, even dou­ble down on those. Fit­ting­ly and un­mis­tak­ably record­ed at Elec­tri­cal Au­dio, a brit­tle, of­ten crawl­ing sound in the rough area of Noise- and Math Rock, Post- and Slow­core al­lows it­self am­ple time to un­fold and sounds a lot like their home­town in the late 80s to 90s. Or, at dif­fer­ent points, like a more straight­for­ward Shel­lac, slow mo­tion Tar, much loud­er Slint or an even more bleak vari­ant of Codeine.

Al­bum-Stream →

Mini Skirt - Pretty

Sunflowers - Dreamweaver

End­less Voy­age, out Feb­ru­ary 7th via Stolen Body Records.

Clamm - Liar

Be­seech Me, out Jan­u­ary 24th.