This Madrid group’s third short-form artifact is their strongest one yet i’d say, delivering two explosive new charges of what you could describe as textbook eggpunk in the vein of Beta Máximo, Beer, Pringue, Prison Affair, Möney, Goblin Daycare and Hugayz, that has the aesthetics down perfectly while bringing enough substance of its own to the table to stand on its own two feet. Niebla is the true standout track here though, which dares to go just a little harder to places a little darker than we’re used to in this genre, in what amounts to a perfect miniature post punk assault.
Bristol’s Möney took their time to find their bearings as a band but after their 2023 demo showing lots of promise and last year’s tape with SPRGRS serving as evidence of further progress, everything perfectly clicks into place on their newest EP thanks to the most carefully fleshed-out set of tunes so far, their both psychedelic- and post-punk-leaning take on contemporary eggpunk really shining here with a forceful performance and comparatively slick production values, at long last propelling them into the genre’s big league in a sonic sub-niche that sounds like very much their own little thing. That said, i’m pretty sure admirers of grops like Molbo, Prison Affair, Winky Frown, Electric Prawns 2 and Beta Máximo will get a lot of joy out of this record as well.
It’s been over six years since we’ve last heard from this Bloomington, Indiana group which by now must be considered a highly influential force on the current garage-, synth- and eggpunk scene while in the meantime, members of the group have pumped their creative juices into acts like Belly Jelly, QQQL, Dummy and Big Hog. Now that they finally break the deafening silence, i gotta say this shit works better than ever in what must be the strongest set of tunes they’ve delivered so far. Just a tiny bit less weird and cluttered than on their previous efforts with more grounded, catchy and melodic song foundations and echoes of the likes of Tyvek, Marked Men and Lost Sounds, this is a strikingly mature work with all the hallmarks of a band that took a long break to branch out creatively in other projects, now reconvening to apply everything they’ve learned along the way with sleepwalking precision to an effortlessly wrecking result.
Insanely engaging garage shit from a Detroit group via the reliable local cassette forgery Painters Tapes, covering an admirable stylistic bandwidth that successfully combines many traits of quirky and elaborate garage punk groups á la Uranium Club, R.M.F.C., Erik Nervous, Satanic Togas, Exwhite and Dumb, the DIY post punk/garage-hybrids of Shark Toys and many flashes of contemporary eggpunk like Prison Affair, Clarko, Snooper, Beer, Winky Frown, Завірюга, Midgee, Gobs and Goblin Daycare. There’s no room for boredom here as you can never know what’s gonna lurk behind the next corner of this freakisch little tape.
Another strong Ismatic Guru record containing their whole discography so far if i’m not mistaken but, having featured them before, the five new tunes are of primary interest here. Just consider the other twenty tracks as a neat bonus if you haven’t heard them already. I considered the early material of the Buffalo, NY group as a bit hit-and-miss but the quality control has certainly ramped up since then, with their third EP having been the most pronounced improvement. So now here is their fifth batch of tunes and once again they’re outdoing themselves, having never sounded this confident and effortless in their mutant-funk post punk sketches that you could describe as a weird egg-ified fusion between a funked-up Landowner, early Minutemen and The Pop Group, maybe? I also imagine that admirers of last spring’s Cartoon LP might get a new kick out of this.
Cologne’s longstanding art punk bastion Tics are at it again and on their latest 7″ via local label Mörtel Sounds they come across the most well-defined and focused we’ve heard of them in quite a while. All the moving parts are interlocking admirably here, with the opening track Clad Faun being the closest thing here to the heavily Minutemen and Gang Of Four-indebted funky post punk of their earlier works. Simultaneously though, it also sees them opening up their sound to a variety of influences i might roughly locate in the ’90s Dischord universe and particularly the more melodic outliers of Fire Party and Autoclave in this case, while the remainder of this EP leans more into the somewhat rougher, slightly math-y flipside of that same coin with the likes of Jawbox, Hoover, Smart Went Crazy, Bluetip and Kerosene 454 sure having made their mark on these songs in addition to further ’90s mainstays such as Polvo, Unwound and Chavez. Just as well though, i can also smell the distinct odor of more recent australian and NZ acts á la Die! Die! Die!, Batpiss and Bench Press in there, or of US groups like Stuck and Rip Room.
A delightfully strange little beast, this Florida group’s second EP which kinda plays out like a mix-and-match version of early Siouxie, B-52’s and Delta Five being transformed into some kind of shambolic Urinals aesthetic while also having plenty of a contemporary eggpunk flourish to it, with another comparison coming to mind being the Lo-Fi art punk of NY group Exo.
An incredible three-way split tape bringing together some groups you should definitely keep your eye on in the forseeable future. Chicago’s Answering Machines start things off with a remarkable bang in the form of catchy pop tunes that seem to combine many of the most striking qualities of the late-aughts to early 2010’s fuzz punk excesses by the likes of Wavves, No Age with the propulsive power pop by groups such as Bad Sports, Warm Soda, Sonic Avenues or Scupper, while the overall fuzzed-out aesthetics and production values call to mind stuff on the rougher end of that same spectrum á la Violent Change, The Wind-Ups, Famous Mammals, Honey Bucket, Germ House, Far Corners and maybe also early Chronophage. Good Flying Birds from Indianapolis, who’ve also released an absolutely stunning debut tape just a day prior to this, then present three smashers occupying some of the whitespace inbetween the worlds of eighties jangle pop, C86-related pop goodness and plenty of late-eighties Sarah Records indie pop vibes. Pulling Hair is a tune for the ages i’d say. Rounding out things is St Louis art rock outfit Soup Activists whom i’ve admittedly had kind of a difficult time warming up to at first and still think are best enjoyed in small doses. Well, what we get here is certainly a suitably small dose of their craft and i have to concede there probably couldn’t have been a more perfect, relaxed and low-key conclusion to this amazing little cassette.
Just as on their three demos leading up to this new EP, New Jersey group Feeding Tube are bringing about yet another depraved orgy of pure sonic perversion in a quirky-as-fuck blend of angular egg- and post punk full of choppy rhythms, odd time signatures and blown-out sonics.
I’m just gonna assume that certain Nick G. mentioned in connection with this newest release courtesy of our favorite bullshit enterprise Discontinuous Innovation Inc. is that same dude who also gave us the underrated post punk highlight that was 2023’s Broken? If so, his sound has certainly evolved a good bit into a more catchy and melodic direction on his first EP under the NRG moniker while still being recognizable as having arisen from the same mind, adding psychedelic flourishes and sprinkles of melodic indie rock to the mix. Less Criminal Code and Sievehead this time and more in line with such highly regarded, more or less recent post punk phenomena as Marbled Eye, The Drin, Straw Man Army, Institute, Public Eye and Waste Man but eaqually having some distinct vibes akin to a bunch of indie rock-leaning post punk groups from roughly a decade earlier, like The Gotobeds and Sleepies.
