Austin, Texas group Guiding Light already had a pretty exciting, if still kinda messy debut EP out via Stucco / Down South Tapes in 2024, who are now also responsible for the cassette release of their first full length record (viny is availablel via Post Present Medium), on which they up their game in pretty much every aspect of their sound as the the folk-ish strummy melancholia of Shackled By Lust makes immediately clear and even though that tune ain't fully representative of the rest of the album, it keeps on resonating as a thoroughly impressive opening salvo nonetheless. That greatness persists all throughout the record where their folk- and cowpunk-adjacent strummery somewhere inbetween the likes of Angst and Volcano Suns keeps colliding with eighties Post Punk right between the chairs of, say, Burma, Saccharine Trust, Man Sized Action and early Minutemen, though spiked with occasional bits of Flying Nun Post Punk Psychedelia, catchy Jangle Pop guitar leads and -harmonies, though if instead you feel like naming more recent Folk-/Cowpunk/Post Punk hybrids á la Leche, Cardi O., more recent Rolex or Optic Nerve, i'm gonna say you're right on the money too. Can't miss this one if you're into any of that shit.
Different flavors and intensities of cowpunk-related noise seem to be a running thread in the past two weeks and right on cue, there's also a new record by one of recent years' most impressive voices in the field: Reuben Sawyer's solo project Anytime Cowboy, as usual released without much fuss or even the slightest heads-up in terms of promotion and i like that - Anytime Cowboy certainly ain't a group in danger of getting dubbed an industry plant by kids just coming to terms with the fact that such a thing as the music PR business even exists, haha. Anyway, with how massive an instant classic last year's Demons Obey has been, it would surely be kind of a tall order to expect another of those right away and indeed, its successor doesn't even feel too concerned with one-upping that record and instead comes across as just another very, very good record that may feel a couple tracks too long at one point or another but on the plus side, shuffles things around with a slightly altered, lighter overall feel, leaning a bit heavier into a relaxed and upbeat indie rock vibe while still carrying that unmistakable folk-ish strummy, jangly feel and the uncanny, surreal quality to these tunes. At eighteen of those, the record predictably has a bit of a looser and more fragmented character, though if you judge it by the sheer number of certified bangers on there, i'm gonna say it's nothing short of another fucking winner.
The modern-day cowcore veterans from Austin, Texas return just a year after their quite good but also a bit too long and somewhat disjointed previous dose of pure chaos that was the Miracle Whip-It LP on Digital Hotdogs. This new EP now is in a way the exact opposite of that, their most condensed and coherent record so far with all the excess fat removed, eight minutes of super-dense excellence bursting at the seams from an abundance of clever ideas, heavy duty hooks and melodies in a massive spell of heavily Dicks-informed insanity.
Reuben Sawyer has been active for quite a while already with various groups and projects in a wide variety of musical styles, though he only really entered the 12XU universe in 2023 with Demons Obey, his third LP under the Anytime Cowboy moniker, which has been a strange beast for sure in juxtaposing elements of blues-ish and jangly cowpunk- and garage pop with a somewhat surreal, otherworldly quality anchored by Sawyer's uncannily calm vocal delivery. His newest LP now may as well be his strongest, most accomplished one yet, streamlining his previously somewhat cluttered disjointed sonic space into an unexpectedly cohesive whole, making his equally odd, catchy and melancholic compositions - enabled by some next-level songwriting chops - glow and sparkle like never before.
Digital Hotdogs brings us the newest crime of Austin, Texas cowpunk wrecking crew Leche which, way more than any of their previous works, reminds me quite a bit of another Digital Hotdogs mainstay, Trashdog, not so much in terms of their actual sound and more in their hyperactive, disjointed anything-goes approach dismissing or subverting any established rules and conceptions of genre, structure, continuity, reality itself... so yeah this is yet another glorious genre-bending, fragmented mess that can feel like a bit too much of everything at times. But once you filtered your way thruough all the stuff, there's a really neat single LP hidden in this seemingly indiscriminate dump of a double LP's worth of material. This is maybe not so much (Trashdog's) Weezer's Blue Album and more (Leche's) The Beatles' White Album - a bit too long, kinda messy, in seemingly random sequence and it shouldn't be judged by its weakest parts.
A pretty fucking stunning debut LP from an Alamance, North Carolina duo excelling in a hazy and hypnotic mixture of noise rock, post punk, oldschool indie rock and the darkest alleys of the americana spectrum. The latter tendency often come across like a more vicious and propulsive take on the muddy southern gothic charm of (quite paradoxically) NYC based group Weak Signal but also, at certain points, you may find traces of the blues-y proto-noise rock of Feedtime and Scratch Acid, the swamp rock of eighties Scientists. The overarching melancholy of the whole affair then again reminds me of somewhat indie rock-leaning groups like Australia's Kitchen's Floor, Treehouse and earlier stuff of London's Witching Waves on one hand, the moody, eccentric post punk of acts like Auckland/Berlin-based groups Trust Punks, Dead Finks on the other, with further similarities to the deep abysses of Atlanta's Uniform, Glittering Insects, Mother's Milk or the folk-ish Angst- and Meat Puppets-indebted neo-proto-grunge of Bellingham, Washington group Pig Earth and Madison, Wisconsin's Dharma Dogs. All of that is being rolled expertly into ten all-killer-no-filler widescreen melodramas here with perfect sonic architectures marked by super effective buildups and payoffs.
What a neat little oddity, this second EP by Chicago group Forklift Rodeo, on which they're mixing some weird-ass unpredictable bursts of cowpunk with small traces of 90s AmRep/Tough&Go-esque noise rock, postcore and occasionally also some kind of contemporary eggpunk quality, though in that regard i'm thinking more of early Skull Cult rather than the somewhat more codified recent crop of Lo-Fi-recorded insanity. Speaking of Lo-Fi... this record certainly ain't that, giving a well-produced sheen and transparency to their equally quirky, sprawling and intricate constructions that would indeed have absolutely no need for hiding behind an obscuring layer of noise and grime.
The debut EP of this NYC dude is drenched in the weirdest of eccentricities from start to finish and reeks of the more insane branches of early hardcore punk and proto-noise rock á la Flipper and Broken Talent, combined with tons of random early eighties cassette culture artifacts from that age of untamed creativity that just didn't give a fuck 'cos few people were listening anyway. Also at play here is some sort of cowpunk vibe most notably in the double attack of The Carnal Boogie and No Singing No Dancing, some bananas flashes of rockabilly and '50s bubblegum pop in The Night Is Here and Four Kinds Of Lonely. This shit is off the rails and it's a beauty to behold.
This Los Angeles group confidently kicks up an absolutely respectable fuzz utilizing rather modest means. These five rippers sound a bit like what i'd imagine it would be like if you infused a more dumbed-down variant of the earthy and noisy post-/garage punk hybrids of The Cowboy or Flat Worms with a good deal of Gun Club- and Feedtime-esque blues- and cowpunk. The result, as you might've figured already, doesn't add anything new to the mix but still manages the hit the sweet spot every single time.
Following a thoroughly enticing debut EP last year, Bergen, Norway group Sklitakling present an even stronger first LP, retaining the strummy, quirky charm of the debut while expanding and branching out stylistically. Their songwriting has won a lot of contour since then, their idiosyncratic arrangements coming across much crisper now. Despite their norwegian origin, i can't help but feel reminded of the danish scene of the past decade - the Copenhagen approach to post punk you might say - with the likes of Iceage, Melting Walkmen, Spines and, just recently, Pleaser coming to mind at various points as having a similar sense of melancholy and melody. In addition, there's a distinct cowpunk vibe at play here, kinda like an LSD-soaked early Angst, Gun Club and, especially, the more recent hallucinogenic existential nightmare of Murderer.
