Jug & The Bugs of Vernon Township, New Jersey have been messing about for a good while by now, along the way having dumped tons of stuff on Bandcamp in varying flavors of garage punk and even the occasional bit of abstract no-wave-ish noise, all of it ranging from rather traditional and oldschool to kinda artsy and elaborate. Their newest LP though feels like the exact moment in which the group has found something of their own voice, transcending their fast-and-loose garage punk roots. And indeed these guys aren't fucking around here in a tightly focused group effort, some comparatively polished sounding production values putting these elegantly crafted little art punk dramas in just the right light. Right out of the gate the opening track Your World radiates a distinct vibe á la Wire-meets-Dead Boys. It's Wire in particular though who will come to mind more than just once over the course of this record, in addition to such powerhouses of that whole garage-/art-/post punk axis like Marbled Eye, Ex Cult, fairly recent Institute, Tyvek, Shark Toys, Andy Human & The Reptoids, R.M.F.C., Motorbike... and on top of that, in the second half there's some unmistakable power pop bent taking hold in tunes like Delivery and Away Today. So yeah this is quality shit no doubt.
New shit from that Cleveland, Ohio axis of smartypants post- and garage punk centering around Cruelster, Perverts Again, Knowso and The Carp, the linking element to each of them being the distinctive "sprechgesang" vocals of Nathan Ward. Now Cruelster have always been the most fun and straightforward rockin'-out entity of the bunch and their newest LP is no exception to that, which isn't to say by any means that their compact little art punk/-core bursts were any less ambitious, inventive and elaborate... only that Cruelster appears to focus the most on embedding and quantizing (yeah, quantization is a word that springs to mind a lot with any of these groups) their angular zig-zagging hooks into a reasonably friction-less garage- and hardcore punk framework. Fairly smart shit that only sounds kinda dumb - the best of two opposing worlds!
Philadelphia's TVO already stuck out from the pack on their previous EPs with a make of post- and garage punk that seemed to take uncommon inspiration from a number of groups of the proto-grunge and proto-noise rock era with clear echoes of U-Men, Scientists, early Mudhoney, Feedtime, Fungus Brains, Scratch Acid and X (AUS), to name just a few of the usual suspects. Their new full length debut still has all of the same goodness on board while also gradually steering their ship into a somewhat unexpected direction by drenching their songs in a generous helping somewhat sleazed-up, bluesy rock'n'roll and what can i say, without exception they deliver the songs and tight-ass performances here to make the shit stick and indeed these tunes are a marked jump forward for the group, showcasing an exceptionally tight grip on their always dead-on songwriting skills.
Always a welcome kickass affair, new material by Jake Sprecher of Terry Malts fame and his current band/project The Wind-Ups, which went off with a bang in 2021 with the incredible Try Not To Think LP and has since then not changed a whole lot but also never disappointed - a constant, reliable level of quality that persists through their third longplayer too, still making it hard not to be instantly enchanted by their timeless garage rock and bubblegum pop compositions taking on a delightfully rustic and fuzz-laden sonic form of blown-out noise pop and garage punk.
Digital Hotdogs brings us the newest crime of Austin, Texas cowpunk wrecking crew Leche which, way more than any of their previous works, reminds me quite a bit of another Digital Hotdogs mainstay, Trashdog, not so much in terms of their actual sound and more in their hyperactive, disjointed anything-goes approach dismissing or subverting any established rules and conceptions of genre, structure, continuity, reality itself... so yeah this is yet another glorious genre-bending, fragmented mess that can feel like a bit too much of everything at times. But once you filtered your way thruough all the stuff, there's a really neat single LP hidden in this seemingly indiscriminate dump of a double LP's worth of material. This is maybe not so much (Trashdog's) Weezer's Blue Album and more (Leche's) The Beatles' White Album - a bit too long, kinda messy, in seemingly random sequence and it shouldn't be judged by its weakest parts.
This Cleveland, Ohio group's second EP strikes all the right chords with me after ther 2023 Debut already made a strong first impression, but this new one is another level of insanity altogether for their sonic assault of quirky & rowdy hardcore- and, occasionally, post punk wrapped in a thick layer of grimy Flipper-esque noise texture that calls to mind pretty much any modern-day genre classic by the likes of Stinkhole, Launcher, Mystic Inane, early Soupcans, Dollhouse, Lumpy and the Dumpers, Vulture Shit and Big Bopper, just to name a couple of the more obvlous ones.
This Hamburg group creates fun, short and snappy little garage-/synth-/eggpunk tunes that don't stray too far from widely established genre formulas but gets everything about that shit so fuckin' right as if they've been at it for ages, cycling through a decent variety of workmanlike genre exercises that you feel pretty sure you've heard somewhere before but can't escape their catchy spells anyway, so i'm gonna say friends of shit like Beer, Media Puzzle, Winky Frown, Prison Affair, Set Top Box, Ghoulies or Goblin Daycare can't go wrong with this shit either.
Just as its two predecessors, the newest EP by New York's Jean Mignon is yet another delightful attack of catchy and mean garage-/proto punk goodness in which a good deal of primitive '77 energy is getting poured into a rather timeless sound of blown-out garage punk insanity which, in tunes like Won't Put Him Down, is sure gonna strike a chord with admirers of, say, Kid Chrome or that recent Elvis 2 LP.
Almost ten years after their last recorded sign of activity, the 2010s San Francisco garage punk mainstays Useless Eaters are getting the band back together and sound more determined and explosive than ever before, as i was already lucky to witness on occasion of their absolutely unreal and intense Cologne gig earlier this year. Now on their first new recorded artifact - available digitally already with a 7" release expected sometime via Goodbye Boozy - they're killing it once again, in some way continuing the spaced-out, kraut-y and post punk-ish psychedelic leanings of their most recent couple of releases pre-hiatus, propelled forward in an insanely tight, dense and unrelenting performance in which every little detail seems to fall perfectly into place with sleepwalking ease and certitude. Awesome to have them back!
This Sydney group delivers five delicious new bursts of Spits-ass catchy garage punk with an additional hint of Lost Sounds or maybe some incarnations of Sick Thoughts. Nothing more than that, nothing less, and what can i say... that shit still rips like it's two-thousand-and-change.
Kickass electro punk from Portland, Oregon that stikes a perfect balance of abrasive crunch and catchyness. Right away this shit kinda strikes me as a less choppy version of Lansing, Michigan group Snarewaves, especially similar in their overall Lo-Fi Amiga 500 tracker-ish sample punk aesthetic but just as well i'm reminded of Germany's own synth punk sensation Klint and somewhat older phenomena like North Carolina sample punks ISS and Berlin's Heavy Metal.
Another utterly puzzling burst of lo-fi hardcore noise is coming to us from an Orlando, Florida group who already had a decent Demo out via Bellicose Records, but this new one on Drunken Butterfly Records is even more up my alley with its completely blown-out and unpredictable make of hardcore punk insanity that, below the rough and grimy surface, has a good deal of an oldschool garage-, proto- and KBD punk undercurrent going on.
Whatever this Cleveland, Ohio group conjures up on their newest EP always carries that certain air of sugary fuzz punk and noise pop, the varyingly Primitives-informed kind that had a bit of a resurgence in the previous decade with such bands as Feature, UV-TV, Slowcoaches, Monster Treasure or Male Bonding and has been kept alive in more recent times by the likes of Private Lives, Exo and Glitter on the Mattress among others. And what should i say, this shit is every bit as good in its ultra-catchy song substance and has a couple of neat flourishes and surprises to boot, like some mid-to-late-era Hüsker Dü vibe in Here We Go Again, while the slightly Wipers-vs.-Wire-esque sounds of the closing track Symmetry also make me think of a slowed-down version of Nervosas or early Milk Music.
This new collection of alleged b-grade material from one of Melbourne's prime instigators of noisy garage-/hardcore punk chaos is yet another solid proof that you can't ever go wrong with this group, as for much of this EP i absolutely can't see why these tunes wouldn't have made the cut for a "regular" release. Well, one man's trash is another man's treasure i guess and i'm just having a glorious time diving into in this neat little dumpster of leftover scraps.
Now these chaps are from Spain yet their sound rather makes me think a whole bunch of predominantly french bands, their sound sitting inbetween the coordinates of post punk and -core, melodic garage punk and Oi!, calling to mind the likes of Youth Avoiders, Telecult, Nightwatchers, Bleakness and, most recently, Distance or the french-singing Leipzig, Germany group Laxisme. It would thus be easy to dismiss this as yet another artifact of a recently quite ubiquitous subgenre but that would be kinda unfair and discounting what a massive fireworks of powerful hooks this way-above-average record is setting off from beginning to end.
