Two young dutch garage punk upstarts who’ve already proven their potency over the past year-and-change join forces on this neat little split EP. Haarlem troublemakers Achterlicht give us two more of their rather quirky egg-ish synth punk goodness only for Utrecht’s No Brains to easily one-up them in terms of energy, exchanging some of the previous LP’s eighties Naked Raygun-style riffing for a more abrasive garage punk vibe which i think suits them perfectly here.
I gotta say it’s been an exceptionally fun and joyful ride so far tracking Billiam’s progress gradually morphing from a scrappy-yet-charming eggpunk also-ran into the mighty garage-/synth punk force we know him as today, as he’s only been growing and evolving his sound with every new release, a trend that continues with his newest LP. Not only is this arguably the most densely packed with catchy hooks of all his releases so far, but also the tightest he’s ever sounded with his tunes and arrangements having reached a whole new level of sophistication, elegance and stylistic variety in a relentless nonstop onslaught of viciously contagious earworms.
The two preceding digital Singles TV DVD and Frontier Days sure did a great job at making me eager to finally hear the debut EP by this group from… somewhere and it turns out these tracks aren’t even the strongest this record has to offer! Granted, the egg-ish post punk of the former and the psychedelic garage stylings of the latter still very much hold their own but are certainly just a slight notch below the fluffy power-/fuzz pop of Time To Spare, the catchy garage punk propulsion of Funny Feeling and the sparkling, melancholy Lost Sounds-isms of the closing tune Suggestions. Yup, every song on this is a fucking hit.
This Rome group or project already has a whole bunch of notable EPs and split releases under their belt, all of them quite good and falling easily under the contemporary eggpunk umbrella. This time though, they go for a way rougher, minimalist shade of Lo-Fi aesthetics in these three new bursts of absolutely filthy fuzz punk which seamlessly transport their proven power pop sensibilities into a new direction that echoes the likes of early Wavves and No Age combined with plenty of raw Detroit-style garage artifacts of all eras.
The follow-up LP to the unwieldy two hours, 69 tracks long 2023 opus Prawn Static For Porn Addicts by Moffat Beach, Australia group Electric Prawns 2 is yet again a quite generous affair in the context of the current garage-/eggpunk-adjacent wave, spanning 15 kinda eclectic, genre-hopping tunes that once again prove the impossible-to-contain, wildly creative drive of this group. The opening track Reaction sparkles with that vaguely familiar vibe of neon-glow psychedelia you might expect of a Mononegatives or Pow! record, plus a hint of Isotope Soap, maybe? What follows then is a nonstop fireworks of all-killer-no-filler tunes showcasing a great stylistic variety and, at one point or another, reminding me of a bunch of like-minded groups á la Ghoulies, Billiam, Nick Normal, Alien Nosejob, Erik Nervous or Busted Head Racket, to name just a few. The most incredible thing about this record comes right at the end though, in the form of the closing track Who I Am in which a sense of widescreen drama akin to The Wipers’ Youth Of America or God’s garage one hit wonderMy Pal gets condensed into an ultra-compact hook-fest á la Split System. Holy fuck, what just happened there?!
Here’s yet another little treat of fine egg-related fun by an Ottawa, Ontario act, sounding kinda simple and by-the-numbers at first glance but revealing a great deal of substance under the hood once you listen a little more closely. This shit strikes me a bit as if the smartass quirky post punk pieces of Landowner got crossbred with the no-frills punk attack of that Zhoop/Nightman/Brundle/RONi/etc. dude and subsequently genetically adapted to survive and thrive by the twisted rules of a badly eggpunk-infested environment.
Following a couple of releases which largely dabbled in mellower sounds, Spain’s prime eggpunk-/noise pop act Beta Máximo at long last is cranking up the speeds again while applying and consolidating all the lessons they’ve learned at previous excursions for the benefit of their newest EP, which easily marks their strongest release so far made up of nothing but hits and gelled into place by plenty of simple but rock-solid, top-notch songcraft at its core.
Melbourne’s Kitchen People as a band are about as old at this blog and although it took them a couple years to turn into the highly combustible garage punk force we know them as today, their 2020 EP Planet Earth sure saw the group in creative overdrive and their newest six-track cassette once again is nothing short of brilliant! No wonder, since these folks are partly responsible for other top-rated groups such as Ghoulies, Pleasants, Aborted Tortoise and Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice, all of whom are perfectly suitable references for describing these quirky and slightly egg-ish garage-, post- and synth punk tunes, in addition to such household names as Ausmuteants, Checkpoint and Research Reactor Corp..
Another neat little cassette of moderately egg-related insanity comes our way from this Madrid group, operating in a nebulous zone somewhere inbetween the worlds of garage punk and spaced-out melodic fuzz punk, spiced up with quite a bit of surf rock twang and some dense psychedelic haze. All in all i’d say this shit successfuly combines some of the best traits of acts like Beta Máximo, Beer, Pringue and Prison Affair into a cohesive whole.
The newest LP of Brazil’s prime purveyor of quirky, hyperactive garage-/synth-/eggpunk goodness certainly takes a gamble or two, being full of collaborations with other egg-minded acts all across the globe… or the cosmos, if you wanna roll with the concept and i’m sure the likes of Tombeau, Billiam and Goblin Daycare don’t need any introduction, right? I mean, right? Not everything works here (especially the funky R’n’B stylings of She’s Kinda Cute and OMG They Look So Bad just strike me as ill-considered speed bumps, interrupting the record’s otherwise considerable momentum) but most things certainly do and where the record hits the mark, it hits hard, at times approaching the level of anything-goes chaos and eclecticism of Trashdog or Checkpoint. And after all, i very much prefer a record that tries boldly and fails in some places over one that’s not even bothering.
