Just about half a year after their brilliant previous Weston-le-Clay EP, its successor sees the Warford, England group once again upping their game in terms of both variety and compact-/catchyness of their, at times, subtly math-infused post punk, most significantly expanding on the more midtempo-ish section of their stylistic repertoire and as expected, that shit works just admirably here 'cos this dude (or these dudes?) clearly has the creative juice and raw musicality to pull that shit off. Just as before, smartypants contemporary post punk influences of the Landowner variety loom large over this one too, just as do ancient british DIY art punk staples from a quite diverse sphere inbetween, say, Mekons, Blurt and Television Personalities, though at the same time, Aidmoozic sound very much like themselves here more than ever. The seeds of this greatness were already noticeable on their two 2024 EPs, but Aidmoozic play on a whole different level in 2026 and i'm gonna say that in these short few recent months, Aidmoozic have catapulted themselves onto the cutting edge of contemporary art punk with razor-sharp, though seemingly effortless, precision.
Kaloomps, British Columbia group Headcheese have been messin' about for way longer than my intuition tells me as it still feels to me like their first Demo and self-titled debut mini-LP dropped just about yesterday, even though their most recent previous record Expired is actually like three years old by now. Anyway, this group has certainly left a thorough impresson in my faulty memory with a number of records that feel like an endless tug-of-war between successive impulses of elaborating on their sound and then dumbing it down again in the most thrilling way possible. Their newest one might well be their magnum opus so far though, with the group operating as a simultaneously tighter and rowdier-than-ever wrecking crew, pummeling into submission their most coherent, fleshed out bundle of chemically unstable creative outbursts so far, which no serious devotee of inventive, shaggy noise inbetween the worlds of KBD-injected garage punk, oldschool propulsive west coast-style hardcore and maybe even some particles of No Trend-, Broken Talent- or Flipper-esque proto noise rock mahem should miss out on.
Philadelphia's Sims Hardin aka Society probably doesn't need an introduction here after the splashes he made with the deliciously scrappy 2022 EP All Flies Go To Hell, whose rough proto punk-ish energy subsequently got channeled into a more concrete, fleshed out art punk sound on 2024's brilliant Social Flies cassette, to which Reign Of Flies now feels like a direct sequel, but not without some clear refinements and growth along the way, setting this record apart with a more pronounced post punk-ish vibe to these tunes and a tighter grip on his catchy hooks than ever before. Yeah this is another must-have for connoisseurs of rough, artsy and eccentric DIY punk oddities.
Just like that Celebrators LP i've just posted, the debut LP of Oamaru, New Zeeland group Cuticles is yet another really freakin' good 21-song LP that could have become a freakin' brillian 15-song LP just by cutting some fat but ya know... i'm not gonna complain about such an abundance of good, especially if that shit is so fucking up my alley. Featuring members of 2010s NZ DIY punk staples Moonrakers and Trendees, this group, which first really caught my attention with their excellent 2023 EP Pavlova, certainly shares some of that shambolic avantgarde DNA but channels it into a much more catchy and melodic whole, trading in much of that raw Half Japanese-style mayhem for a more approachable aesthetic, reminiscent among others of old british DIY acts in the neighborhood of Swell Maps, Television Personalities, Mekons and Desperate Bicycles. There's a good deal of old Flying Nun energy goin' on aswell plus some stray occurences of the more pop-focused end of the Pink Flag-era Wire spectrum in tunes like Making Up Shit. If i had to come up with more recent bands as comparisons, i'd say New York's Famous Logs in History, Philadelphia group Society and the early works of Adelaide's own Wireheads don't strike my as totally off either.
This Los Angeles group has crafted a deliberately cluttered and disjointed yet insanely exciting mess of a record that seems to take inspiration from old heroes of the art punk world ranging from the likes of The Pop Group, Pylon and hints of James Chance, Pere Ubu and even a slight trace of Wire to their more underground and, potentially, more synth-heavy counterparts á la Minimal Man, Visitors, Neverous Gender... and yeah, quite obviously there's also some Devo DNA embedded in there. Or, in more recent years, you may also find some common ground here with contemporary acts like Landowner, Cartoon or Ismatic Guru. Then again, the folk-ish strummy energy goin' on 0126iii recalls the likes of Angst, Volcano Suns or early My Dad Is Dead. Anyway, there's a great deal of variety and an uncontainable creative momentum happening on this record and even though not every experiment pays off equally well here, with a generous 21 Tunes assembled here i think it's just fair to rate this album by its abundance of hits rather than its rare misses.
This Chicago group had already made considerable waves with two promising EPs in 2023 and now their debut longplayer retains much of that chaotic energy in a slightly more streamlined sound which, admittedly, doesn't sound all that novel and original in the year 2026 after the past decade has given us a not exactly overwhelming, but steady and noticeable stream of artsy post punk and weirdcore acts that may all have played some part in influencing these tunes ranging from 2010s acts like Vexx, Warm Bodies and Negative Scanner to more recent ones á la Scud, Sniffany and the Nits, Judy and the Jerks or Warp. Of course, you also can't exactly avoid the Snooper comparisons here, although i wouldn't consider them too central to this just barely egg-adjacent (though also not entirely unrelated) sound. I'm also gonna say that older Downtown Boys probably were a factor shaping this stuff too. Anyway, i think i can just about find room in my heart for yet another record roughly in that vein, although looking forward, a potential successor would probably do good to condense their mess of disparate ideas into something less fleeting and throw a little less shit on the wall at any given time, even though for the time being, most of that stuff still sticks quite well actually, all things considered. I just have my doubts that schtick will work a second time.
After two awesome EPs in 2024, Austin's Temporary Curse return with a third one that at first glance strikes me as maybe a bit too 2024-sounding still, given the accelerated proliferation and codification of eggpunk tropes and aesthetics, genre oversaturation, yadda yadda... i've talked about that shit before. As such, this thing actually starts out sounding a little bloodless and uninspired to me, only really kicking into gear with its third track Monochrome when the distinct catchy and psychedelic qualities of the predecessors start to break through in an explosion of rousing hooks, followed by the flawless fuzzed-out midtempo gem of a song that is Insect and a perfectly functional no-frills garage punk smasher named Speedracer. The instrumental closing tune then doesn't hurt but ain't nothing to write home about either. So there you have it, three hits, three misses on this one and there i've just done it, i wrote the first explicitly middling review of a record for this blog and i'm totally not used to doing that and feel a bit like an asshole for that. Not that i ever considered my blurbs "reviews" in the first place anyway rather than badly written though wholehearted endorsements, but i guess i'll have to call them reviews now? Still better than dubbing all of it content, i guess.
Anyway, if you've been wonderin' why i've grown to be so uncharactaristically critical of new releases recently then that's 'cos 2026 so far has been the most dogshit disappointing, creatively stagnant year for music i can remember since i started doing this blog and oftentimes i'm really struggling to find much to truly get excited about these days (certainly one of multiple factors responsible for the decreasing frequency and number of posts here) - quite fitting for a year in which most things outside of music also unconditionally suck more than ever and i only expect things to get much worse going forward. Whatever man, here's hopin' 2026 can at least somewhat redeem itself with an onslaught of top-notch releases in the fall, otherwise i'm slowly gonna have to start wondering what the fuck i'm actually doing here and why i should keep subjecting myself to the tolls it takes to keep doing a thing that has never really felt that sustainable in the long term anyway. Like, starting a music blog in 2013, just around the time when the older music blogs already started dropping like flies with everyone else determined to leave the open web for good and disappear in that unholy social media black hole? Fucking ridiculous proposition if you ask me and 2026 feels like could finally become the breaking point for me in the face of other personal, mental health-related and economic realities. Anyway, for the time being, someone please do something to distract me from that nagging end-of-an-era vibe i'm getting.
When the Carp released their first demo 2021 it was love at first sight but still the group felt a bit like a fifth wheel as far as Nathan Ward-Fronted bands are concerned, kinda like a slightly too logical middle ground between the jaggy post punk efficiency of Knowso, the wild off-the-rails energy of Cruelster and the rougher garage edge of Perverts Again. Their excellent debut LP in 2024 then saw them branch out a little, though still sounding kinda noncommittal to any clear direction that would differentiate them from the established Cruelster and Knowso blueprints. Now this new one for the first time sounds to me like the group is slowly starting to develop an identity of their own marked by a more rustic, wilfully dumbed-down garage punk undercurrent and a way less brainy and detached, more earnest and unfiltered heart-on-your-sleeve approach to their tunes. Anyway, as pretty much anything these dudes have touched so far, this yet another essential nugget for admirers of their particular strain of highly structured and sturdy post punk cubism with a fuzzy garage edge.
This Victoria, British Columbia group is generating tons of fun and eccentric post-/art punk bliss that partly, but not quite, fits the common mold of late '70s / early '80s Siouxsie, Pylon, Delta 5 or B-52s inspired groups… there's a similar catchy quirkines to these but you also can't deny a strong garage-y proto punk thing goin' here and a rougher, more anarchic UK-bred DIY vibe, the kind you'd rather expect from the likes of Cravats, Membranes, Fatal Microbes or Flowers In The Dustbin or hidden away in the depths of some old Messthetics compilation, while there's still some plausible connection you can draw to more recent post punk phenomena of the Spread Joy and Marcel Wave variety and even some 2010s weirdcore phenomena loke Warm Bodies and Vexx. That's some appealing shit right there.
Smirk always kinda stood apart from the pack of 2nd wave eggpunk groups in as much as there always appeared to have been some tension going on between the more upbeat and quirky egg-ish vibes and a much darker post punk undercurrent in many of their early tunes, a trait they went all-in on for the first time only on last year's incredible Domestic Dog 7", just in time when their previous trajectory, as well as that of much of their eggpunk surroundings in general, started to show serious signs of diminishing returns. Its two tunes put them more in the neighborhood of essential post punk pillars of the Institute, Marbled Eye and The Estranged variety and the shit worked just admirably 'cos these impressively elaborate and balanced tunes absolutely held their own and so does everything on this new LP now, their most sober and earnest set of tunes to date, showing all the hallmarks of another eggpunk outfit hatching into a full-blown chickenpunk group in a way that i'm sure would make ex Lumpy dude quite proud, even if i still think he's got the whole chicken-and-egg problem upside down. In all these cases, clearly the egg was there first and these eggs need to have room to exist and be bred and flourish in order to mature into the kind of beauty we see right here. Damn does that sentence make me sound stupid and pretentious. I better refrain from typing any more random words now.
