Man, it must have been ages since we last heard of this Philadelphia group, which for a long time has been one of the probably less then ten bands you could plausibly qualify as “pop punk” that doesn’t make me desperately flee the room in a matter of seconds. Dark Thoughts still prove they’re capable of pulling off that impossible trick and all it takes them to do so is one of the most beefy yet slick garage punk sounds around, a feisty, determined performance and a perfect hit ratio when it comes to simple, tried-and-tested but always perfectly to-the-point punk songcraft.
And again, there’s two New Snarewaves releases already! Not only did a digital EP drop like two weeks ago, there’s also a new cassingle via Knuckles on Stun with an epic length of exactly one minute on which you’ll have to make up your own mind about whether or not it’s worth shelling out four-and-a-half USD for the running time equivalent of three-fifths your average punk tune. Anyway, as usual these are a bunch of excellent new burst of quite singular and eccentric, blown-out garage-/synth-/electro punk that’s equally simple, catchy and explosive.
Tom Lyngcoln, previously probably best known for his old groups Pale Heads and The Nation Blue, really hit upon something special with his 2020 solo LP Raging Head and its larger-than-life dramas combining oldschool postcore with rustic americana elements, condensed down to fit into a super-economic, minimal footprint. So now we get to witness his newest band and kind of a spiritual successor to that one-off project, featuring further familiar faces like the garage punk supreme being that is Jackson Reid Briggs (currently of Split System), Callum Foley of The Blinds, The Stevens (he also played on Raging Head) and old gun Jay Jones, who had also provided the drum recordings Raging Head was built around and who apparently has played in a shit-ton of groups all the way since the mid-’90s that i’m just a bit too young to remember. Most of all it’s still Lyngcoln’s own distinct handwriting that’s front and center here though, with the whole thing playing out like a considerably rougher spin on his solo LP, more spontaneous and immediate, compraratively messy and cluttered in a good way. There’s one other thing i’m reminded of a little here and that’s the bands of Atlanta’s Josh Feigert and particularly his more recent groups like Uniform, Glittering Insects and Mother’s Milk.
Okay… if i’m not mistaken this new Melbourne-based project is one dude who’s also in Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice and Kitchen People and on his debut LP under the JJ Sizza moniker he creates a garage-/synth punk sound that feels like a perfect middle ground inbetween the olschool Ausmuteants playbook and a more contemporaneous-feeling eggpunk-ish vibe. This shit sticks ‘cos it simply has all the catchy song goodnes on board needed to make that happen. Nothing new under the sun but plenty of intoxicating quality shit goin’ on here nonetheless!
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.
In recent years, french Oi! has come to stand for an unlikely level of excellence in a genre that i wouldn’t have put much stock in just over a decade ago. Admittedly, the overall parameters of its current incarnation can still feel a bit samey and formulaic but that’s certainly not an attribute i’d pin on this group from Nantes, whose second full length effort starts out kinda oldschool-ish with a somewhat Gun Club-esque garage vibe and another great but kinda genre-standard punk tune before their songs subsequently take on a more independent and unique quality, more thoroughly exploring – and eking just enough variety out of – the (to be fair, not exactly unlimited) possibilities of the contemporary garage-/Oi!-/post punk framework with enough song-based oomph under the hood to never get tedious for a second.
Quality german language garage punk sure ain’t the most abundant thing around but this Ludwigsburg dude or group pulls of this unlikely marvel effortlessly on their new digital 2-track single, each tune an instant hit and future genre classic in their own right with the first one having some ever-so-subtle egg-ish quality while the vocal harmonies and guitar work remind me positively of the most recent Dumpies and Eye Ball records, while the more melancholy second tune embeds those same qualities in an overall vibe highly reminiscent of Marked Men and Radioactivity. No kidding, that’s exactly how good this shit really is.
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!
Philadelphia’s TVO already stuck out from the pack on their previous EPs with a make of post- and garage punk that seemed to take uncommon inspiration from a number of groups of the proto-grunge and proto-noise rock era with clear echoes of U-Men, Scientists, early Mudhoney, Feedtime, Fungus Brains, Scratch Acid and X (AUS), to name just a few of the usual suspects. Their new full length debut still has all of the same goodness on board while also gradually steering their ship into a somewhat unexpected direction by drenching their songs in a generous helping somewhat sleazed-up, bluesy rock’n’roll and what can i say, without exception they deliver the songs and tight-ass performances here to make the shit stick and indeed these tunes are a marked jump forward for the group, showcasing an exceptionally tight grip on their always dead-on songwriting skills.
