Assembly / Tee Vee Repairman / Smirk / Shop Talk
The past couple weeks had quite an abundance of incredible short-form 2-track releases and i'm even shorter on time than i anticipated as, on top of my infamously unreliable brain chemistry, this week also came up with a family emergency for me to help mitigate, so i'm gonna take the liberty of just dumping the four strongest of the batch in a single post.
The most surprising of thiose was certainly the debut (?) single of Atlanta, Georgia group Assembly, covering a pretty wide and eclectic stylistic spectrum in the postcore, noise- and math rock field ranging from classic '90s and early '00s Dischord-flavored sounds of the Faraquet, Bluetip and Q And Not U variety over other '90s phenomena like Polvo, Braniac and Chavez to more recent noise rock and art punk acts like Wax Chattels, Solderer, Body House, Haunted Horses and, most of all, Spray Paint and assiciated later acts Rider/Horse and During.
Australia's Tee Vee Repairman - yeah, of course it's another group of Gee Tee's Ishka Edmeades - follows up a bunch of previous EPs and a brilliant LP with a new 7" whose two songs can easily be counted as among the finest in a discography that's never been lacking in infectious power pop melodies to begin with.
In a similar vein, there's a new Smirk (aka Nick Vicario, also of Public Eye, Crisis Man und Cemento) 7" that also sees the dude considerably upping his songwriting game, going places we haven't seen of him before with Domestic Dog kinda fusing oldschool anarcho and post punk flourishes with a pronounced 77-ish melodicity and an almost Television-like spaciousness that also permeates the other tune Manhunt in Paradise, the whole of which sounds a bit like the most recent Institute LP being taken a step further in its art punk elegance.
And finally, in contrast to the previous bands, we have an example of a group plainly serving up more of the same and what a brilliant kind of "same" that is, the new 7" of Brooklyn power pop group Shop Talk who've so far always blown me away with every new release and the new one can do no wrong either, with Museum Of Sex being another flawless instance of catchy and straightforward '77-ish punk with that distinct Dickies flavor while the more intricately constructed Gaslight slows things down a bit, adds a more melancholy vibe and equal parts of a Buzzcocks- and Replacements quality to the mix. A knockout tune to say the least.