What an effortlessly ass-kicking affair that is, the new tape by Winston Hightower and his new-ish crew, expanding their 2023 debut EP with four new tracks. Equally out-there and propulsive, these tunes cover a decent spectrum of fuzz-laden noise spread out inbetween the cornerstones of eccentric garage punk á la UV Race, Tyvek or Shark Toys, 2010s (proto-) egg punk of acts like Hobocop, early Skull Cult, and more recent liabilities in the vein of Print Head, Erik Nervous and that newest Billiam 7". That shit rips, in other words.
Excellent new shit, the debut EP of this Nottingham, UK group whose style feels kinda fluid, evading categorization as a whole even if the isolated components feel fairly familiar, the most immediately striking ones being the eggpunk-related eccentricities of Snooper, early Skull Cult, Busted Head Racket, Clarko on one hand and the considerably rougher weirdness of Warp, Beef, Scud on the other while at times even approaching the unpredictable off-the-rails eclecticism of Pressure Pin, Checkpoint or TY.
Is it the third Dragnet LP already? Time flies man. For some reason (time & energy, usually) i've never given them the full blog post treatment here but i'm also gonna say they've never before sounded quite as tight, well-rounded, caffeinated and to-the-point as the Melbourne group featuring members of Vintage Crop, Gonzo and Teen Line among others does on their newest record. There's on one hand that slight Uranium Club-esque vibe to it that also pervades much of the Vintage Crop discography but there's just as much of a distinct quirky synth-driven, eggpunk-ish action going on that sits somewhere inbetween oldschool Ausmuteants, US bands like Smirk, Cherry Cheeks and Australia's own Ghoulies, Aborted Tortoise and Electric Prawns 2.
After six years silence, out of the blue comes the second 7" of this Antwerp, Belgium group via the local garage punk powerhouse Belly Butten Records. And oh boy, this is some heavy duty shit channeling an aesthetic that seems just as influenced by smart artsy garage punk groups á la Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Reality Group as by the sprechgesang and eleborate arrangements of US postcore phenomenon Straw Man Army, even if lyrically this shit is a lot more lighthearted here, in-tune with the overall musical vibe. To round things out, there's also a distinct touch of Tyvek or UV Race progressively creeping in over the course of these four tunes. I think this is just a perfect little 7". So ready for the next one in another in six years.
Top Secret Nichos are my favorite kind of nicho, i'll have fries with that thank you! Dining Nothing, is that so? Okay, maybe not then. Anyway, sin and muerte are pretty much on my agenda too along with beer, smut and Satan. Gotta love these dudes from Rosario, Argentina. Naturally their music kicks ass too! This is some excellent oldschool noise-infused post punk evoking bits and pieces of such groups as Nag, Impotentie, Labor and the early works of Institute, Low Life or Constant Mongrel, with the addtion of maybe a hint of combustive garage punk á la Jean Mignon especially in the aforementioned Dining Nothing.
Winky Frown have been kind of an oddity right from the start even in the - by definition - quite odd eggpunk genre in that their songs on one hand seem to perfectly fit in with a number of thoroughly established eggpunk formulas yet never fail to surprise and transcend the genre's limitations, putting a lot more effort, ideas and songwriting finesse into their tunes than you'd usually expect. Their new digital 2-track single has yet another surprise in store for us when we're greeted with a slow-jam tune kinda channelling a lost artifact of Chairs Missing-era Wire in turn channeling a lost artifact of Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd and the best thing is that shit fucking works! The second tune Upside Down Frown then is closer to the sonics we're used to from the group, which is to say: another marvellously crafted high-momentum electrically driven garage punk smasher that unrelentingly builds up towards a massive payoff.
With the recent Cruelster LP still quite hot out of the oven, here's the newest artifact of another Nathan Ward-fronted group already, the significantly more angular and methodical yet unmistakably related Knowso, whose recent Optimism / Foot Of Pride cassingle had also landed just mere weeks ago. As usual this shit is operating pretty much on the bleeding edge of repetitive post- and art punk weirdness, performed by a bunch of flawlessly rotating, well-greased man machines. Really i can't think of many other bands able to present such rigid and choppy compositions with such a frictionless drive and unbroken momentum. That's not to say their music weren't also catchy as fuck most of the time and especially in the second half here, tunes like Consumer Talk and Panopticon show them expanding on their melodic undercurrents for some of their most immediately striking and accessible tunes so far.
After an already thoroughly enjoyable debut EP in 2023, this Kansas City group's newest LP turns out to be even more up my freakin' alley with its surprisingly flexible, shapeshifting noise attacks in which some amount of oldschool US west coast style meets hints of early Minutemen and such (proto-) postcore and (proto-) noise rock acts like Flipper, Really Red and Saccharine Trust, whose unconventional styles get mutated here into some kind of KBD-drenched garage punk vibe that may be just as well described using a number of more contemporary references of the Launcher, Mystic Inane, Cutup, Fugitive Bubble, Rolex, Cucuy and Flea Collar type.
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!
