This second EP by Esmé Newman aka Glitter On The Mattress from Gateshead, England delivers four perfect little sugary treats of catchy oldschool noise-/indie-/fuzz pop goodness that would only need a bit of added tape hiss to successfully fool me into thinking this were some lost artifact of ’80s DIY cassette culture. At the same time, this shit also has undeniable similarities to some groups of the past two decades like Feature, UV-TV, Private Lives, Slowcoaches, Star Party, early Vivian Girls or, quite recently, Indonesia’s own Crayon Cats. No question, unpretentious fuzzy DIY pop is alive and well in this age!
This new LP by some Elkhart, Indiana dude sees a strikingly simple and time-honored formula getting fucked up to absolute perfection, taking on a sound inbetween the worlds of garage- and hardcore punk, some KBD-leaning eccentricities and a hint of synth-/electro punk in Vacant, succeeding simply by way of overloading our senses with a thick layer of blown-out noise and fuzz. Having a number of high-octane instances of timeless catchy punk excellence like Not A Toy to rely on sure doesn’t hurt either, making for twenty glorious minutes of slightly Lumpy & The Dumpers-esque fuckery which, of more recent years, has also some kinship to groups like Small Portions, Yacht Fire, Dick Hick, Power Shovel and Delta 8.
This neat little tape by some Leicester, UK based weirdo excites with a rowdy aesthetic blown-out within an inch of its life that rapidly alternates between wonderfully shambolic hardcore parts and more garage-leaning fuzz punk sketches almost conjuring up some sort of oldschool Lumpy & The Dumpers-like quality. Music to my ears!
What this dude from Chico, California pulls off on his debut EP i can best describe as a pleasantly antiquated sounding burst of late aughts / early 2010s fuzz punk and noise pop with plenty of a Wavves, Male Bonding and early Terry Malts kind of energy, but equally imbued with some of that certain surf-infused psychedelia of the same era á la Crystal Stilts and Fresh & Onlys.
A neat little bag of tricks and surprises, the debut EP by this Memphis group. The opening track seems hellbent on reanimating the late ’80s / early ’90s vibes of the AmRep and Touch&Go multiverse and, though not affiliated with those labels, i’m particularly reminded of the Lo-Fi noise rockers Drunks With Guns. Diesel Disco then kinda smells of early UK DIY á la early Mekons, Swell Maps and Desperate Bicycles while being transformed into a contemporary fuzz punk context. The Junt is just a perfect midtempo blast of a proto-grunge eighties garage rock throwback. Newspeak cranks up the weirdness with its distinct stop-and-go dynamics and structure. Finally, Control is more like your standard stooges-indebted fuzzy garage rocker and, quite honestly, overall the least thrilling thing on this otherwise thoroughly engaging EP.
This Portland group’s debut EP delights with an effortlessly cool make of fuzz punk alternating between melodic noise pop gems that kinda resemble rougher and simpler variants of early No Age, Terry Malts, Male Bonding, Why Bother?, The Wind Ups or Deletions, and a couple of even more primal bursts that call to mind the likes of Buck Biloxi, Lumpy and the Dumpers, Giorgio Murderer, Bart and the Brats and that Zhoop/Djinn/Feed/etc. dude. Closing out the bunch is a neat acoustic tune that doesn’t shit the bed either.
This second EP by an Austin group consisting of, quite possibly, fully imaginary members save for some lone dude in his bedroom, hits all the right pain- and pleasure points of the nervous system with three burning dumpsters worth of primitive and raw-as-fuck three-chord garage- and fuzz punk behaving just about demented enough to please demanding connoisseurs of other stupid fucking shit á la Buck Biloxi, ISIS or Giorgio Murderer. Love it.
Although i still haven’t dared yet to venture deeper into the kinda intimidating back catalog of Totowa, New Jersey act Monda, they have already made a lasting impression as a shapeshifting, restless creative force in constant flux over the course of this year. While this spring’s Stiff Jumbo spazzed out gloriously and let its freak flag fly in short bursts of melodic noise and then, sumer’s VIII saw them calm down and relax a bit, for large portions of their newest LP’s I’d now say they’re spacing out and i mean that in the most flattering sense. This is a fuzzy bundle of DIY space-/acid punk eccentricities that just can’t hide the creative drive, human warmth, sense of wonder and curiosity behind its, admittedly, pretty fucking stoned appearance, on one hand reminding me a bit of groups like recent Mononegatives, late-era Useless Eaters, Pow! and some of the more motorik minded incarnations of The(e) O(h)Sees while other songs like I Alwys Have It Till I Need It, Chronic Embarrassment and Creek Time inhabit those same anthemic oldschool indie rock and fuzz punk qualities that made the aforementioned records so special.
Where the average group in the 12XU-related spectrum tends to become ever more elaborate until the point where they start to suck (well, if they make it that long…), Seattle group The Unfit seem to go the opposite route, becoming more stripped down and primitive until they’re probably gonna suck at some point as well. Presently, they’re far from having reached that stage though and this shit works out marvelously even if – or maybe just because – more than once, their fuzzy garage- and post punk tunes get boiled down to sort of a Feedtime-esque level of monotonous repetition and simplicity.
This Minneapolis group runs an interesting gamut on their newest EP ranging from the punchy fuzz punk attack of Like A Dream? over the math- and noise rock infused post punk of Yeehaw! to the comparatively straightforward garage punk of Saved, while the closing track 5678 branches out into some kind of a hazy space rock jam. At different points i’m reminded of groups as diverse as early Rolex, Cutie, Shark Toys, Reality Group, The Cowboy and Big Bopper.
