No Brains - Cheap Shot /​/​ The Celebrities - Redd Karpet

Two out­stand­ing re­leas­es rolled in this week dab­bling in un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly old­school aes­thet­ics, both pre­vail­ing in their own way by fair­ly dif­fer­ent means. No Brains from Utrecht, Nether­lands present an un­com­pro­mis­ing­ly straight­for­ward blend of time­less garage punk and ear­ly eight­ies, some­what hard­core- and KBD-ad­ja­cent nois­es. I give this shit 0/​10 stars for orig­i­nal­i­ty and 20/​10 stars for sheer un­re­lent­ing force. That av­er­ages out to an ac­tu­al 10/​10 record, mind you. You think oth­er­wise? That's 'cos you suck at math dude, deal with it.
Al­so plen­ty of garage ac­tion, al­though with more of a '77 and pow­er pop vibe, is what we get on a brand new EP by Cal­i­for­nia group The Celebri­ties via US garage punk bul­wark To­tal Punk. A bit more re­laxed tem­po-wise but these are per­fect­ly fun and catchy lit­tle tunes with some pro­nounced Dead Boys-meet-Dick­ies en­er­gy goin' on here, mak­ing for an ex­quis­ite sug­ar rush of an ad­mit­ted­ly, at times, kin­da cheesy qual­i­ty which thank­ful­ly al­ways gets coun­tered by way an ex­pert­ly craft­ed wall of fuzz. I give it a 11/​10 for all the glitz, glam­our and star pow­er. Maths man, noth­ing we can do about it.

Al­bum-Streams →

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 →

Shop Talk - The Offering

I think this is the same band i've been yap­ping about many moons ago.. Their 2016 EP ap­pears to have been com­plete­ly wiped from the face of the earth and the web though, which is a fuck­ing shame re­al­ly 'cos this was good stuff al­ready. But ad­mit­ted­ly, this shit is so much bet­ter… Melod­ic punk and garage vibes rule supreme here with more than a lit­tle hint of Dick­ies and some dis­tinct '77 and pow­er pop fla­vors that would al­ready make for a per­fect­ly sol­id EP. What pro­pells this one from good to plain out-of-the-ball­park spec­tac­u­lar though are the ad­vanced song­writ­ing chops on dis­play here, run­ning cir­cles around 99% of all oth­er cur­rent punk groups play­ing sim­ple, straight­for­ward pop tunes. This is tru­ly tran­scen­dent, next-lev­el shit, i mean it!

Al­bum-Stream →

Jean Mignon - AN/​AL

Garage Punk with a weird the­mat­ic fix­a­tion on mope­ds and but­t­holes by some New York dude which sounds a lot like his city ca. '73-'77, in­hab­it­ing a son­ic space some­where in­be­tween the pro­to- and ear­ly punk of the NY Dolls, Mod­ern Lovers and Dead Boys, with fur­ther echoes of the wider ear­ly US scene á la Pa­gans, Black Randy and the Met­rosquad on the more re­laxed side of things as well some se­ri­ous ear­ly aus­tralian Saints- and Bird­man en­er­gy in its wilder mo­ments.

Al­bum-Stream →

Tommy And The Commies - Hurtin' 4 Certain

New tunes by Sud­bury, Canada's Tom­my and the Com­mies. You should know what to ex­pect by now: A bright and col­or­ful spec­ta­cle made up of top notch qual­i­ty pow­er pop, a bit of garage and a whole truck­load of buz­zcocks-style straight and melod­ic punk rock, el­e­vat­ed by a punchy per­for­mance as well as some un­err­ing song­writ­ing skill.

Al­bum-Stream →