The Minneapolis Uranium Club Band - Infants Under The Bulb

Holy fuck, has it se­ri­ous­ly been a whop­ping five years al­ready since the last LP by one of the most in­flu­en­tial, defin­ing groups of the cur­rent era of quirky and in­tel­li­gent garage punk? It cer­tain­ly didn't seem that long to me and part of that might be down to their dis­tinct mix of play­ful, an­gu­lar and elab­o­rate garage- and art punk hav­ing been such an om­nipresent un­der­cur­rent of so many things that have hap­pened in the last few years, with groups such as Dumb, Vin­tage Crop, Pinch Points, Abort­ed Tor­toise, Re­al­i­ty Group, Yam­mer­er and Pat­ti be­ing on­ly the tip of the ice­berg con­cern­ing groups that ap­pear to have tak­en some in­spi­ra­tion from them at one point or an­oth­er. On their fourth LP so far, Ura­ni­um Club keep ex­pand­ing their styl­is­tic scope as well, show­cas­ing a ma­tured song­writ­ing abil­i­ty which pays off es­pe­cial­ly well in slow­er num­bers like the strum­my and folk-ish garage pop al­most-a-bal­lad Tokyo Paris L.A. Mi­lan, which unites some qual­i­ties of groups á la Wire­heads, Tyvek and The UV Race, or in The As­cent. with its pro­nounced Tele­vi­sion-es­que vibes. Like any of their pre­vi­ous al­bums, this is noth­ing short of an in­stant genre clas­sic!

Al­bum-Stream →

Dollhouse - I Hate You Dont Leave Me

This New York group's third EP once again show­cas­es them as an over­whelm­ing row­dy force to be reck­oned with, made up of equal­ly smart and fu­ri­ous post­core with some sur­face-lev­el sim­i­lar­i­ties to groups such as Mys­tic Inane, Wymyns Prysyn, Launch­er, Ce­ment Shoes or Liq­uid As­sets. New to me from this group is some pro­nounced melod­ic vibe á la Dri­ve Like Je­hu-goes-Leather­face in the ti­tle track… sur­pris­ing­ly, this too works flaw­less­ly!

Al­bum-Stream →

Jean Mignon - Dirty Mean Fast

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

Balaclava - The 1/​4 Inch Almanac

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!

Al­bum-Stream →

Antenna - Lost

An­ten­na re­leas­es March 8th via Urge Records.

Busted Head Racket - Need For Speed

Go! Go! Go! re­leas­es April 21st via Er­ste Theke Ton­träger.

Fen Fen - Bub

Na­tion­al Threat re­leas­es May 3rd via Sweet Time Records.

JJ And The A's - Generation

Eye­baller re­leas­es March 15th via La Vi­da Es Un Mus Dis­cos.