A steady trickle of new tunes on their bandcamp page already suggested that something new was coming our way from this indispensable pillar of the 2010s garage punk scene, yet it still feels very much out of the blue the way this new LP, their first after roughly a decade, got unceremoniously dropped on bandcamp digitally without warning, a vinyl release via Total Punk to follow sometime later. Also there's the question hanging over this, after their triumphant return as a touring act last year, as to how much Useless Eaters are actually functioning as a band on this record as there's this heavily electronic, homegrown quality to these recordings, making heavy use of classic dub production techniques, synths and sampled drums and an otherwise quite guitar-centric sound that kinda suggests this is Seth Sutton fucking around in the studio solo. Not that it matters much. This is a fascinating record presenting an otherworldly mirror version of Useless Eaters, quite familiar in many aspects but also a bit of a reimagining of their sound, very much unlike anything they've done before in its abstract, cold abrasiveness, a distinct industrial feel to these tunes that exceeds even the most out-there moments of in their previous discography.
Just as unexpected came the release a couple days earier by G2K, a group which i think is a collaboration between Sutton and Sal Go of Washington group Sexfaces. Anyway, these four tunes act as a neat companion piece to the Useless Eaters record, sharing quite a bit of its production aesthetics but otherwise dabbling in a way more raw and primitive oldschool garage-, art- and proto punk-influenced sound enveloped in that familiar layer of spaced-out haze.
A neat new EP by this Harrisburg, Pennsylvania dude who has already amassed a good amount of clutter on his bandcamp, though honestly nothing he's done before has quite the spark of his newest EP which excells in four flawless examples of timeless no-frills (garage) punk songwriting. Self-described as first wave punk revival, i'll beg to differ and say that, despite a very slight '77 undercurrent here, these tunes reek way more of the 2000s and '10s garage punk eras, clearly echoing the likes of, say, solo Jay Reatard, Dark Thoughts and most of all, early Liquids among many others.
This South Carolina group's previous This Has To Be Hell EP didn't quite cut it for me yet but this more consistent and fleshed-out successor now is sure worth a post here, a kinda weird bastard inbetween somewhat eggpunk-ish synth squeaks and fuzzed-out space punk of the Corpus Earthling and Zoids variety with nothing terribly new or smart happening here but their staunch dedication to its simple formula just sells this shit for me.
In a world of rapidly changing musical hypes and trends and an unrelenting social media promo rat race trying to please an algorithm way more than actual humans, i always get some healing out of watching a band as uncompromising and unfazed by the modern attention economy as these frenchmen, who even predate this blog by over a decade, simply doing whatever the fuck they like for close to a quarter century by now. Accordingly, their seventh LP once again shares all the qualities and quirks you've come to love about them over time and nonetheless they stay utterly unpredictable here in their art punk that stays every bit as crude as it's catchy and nonetheless has plenty of variety and smarts buried under its rough surface too, their possible inspirations spanning from old-timey noise makers á la Half Japanese, The Membranes, Feedtime, The Fall, various old no wave-related or even slightly kraut-ish indulgences to slightly more recent garage punk essentials like the early works of The UV Race and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. But really, it would be unfair at this point to treat Subtle Turnhips as anything less than the unique and uncompromising creative force in their own right they've proven to be and this new record too is no less than yet another instant genre classic.
Here's an odd one for you, and i mean that in the most positive sense, coming from a group presumably from Charlotte, North Carolina. The thing starts out as very much of a hardcore record, though even throughout the first couple tunes you can't help but notice that pronounced spaced-out psychedelic undercurrent and an increasingly catchy, melodic quality as well as some top-notch ability of song construction underneath that really goes into overdrive in the fourth track Misery, after which the record then incrementally slows down the tempo with each track and leans even more into an acid rock-driven post punk, postcore and art punk vibe that reminds me a bit of recent Science Man, Optic Nerve and there's even a slight bit of LoFi-era Poison Ruin in Make A Case. Inevitably, the record eventually reaches something of a full-on space rock territory yet retains all of these at times subtly emo-fied, melancholic undertones and ist melodic brilliance and you know what, at no point does this group sound much like anything else around really - the best comparison i can come up with for the second half from the top of my head are the likes of recent Shrudd and some of Electric Prawns 2, but really that's kind of a stretch already. You also may compare the larger-than-life drama of the record's middle section to Tom Lyngcoln's Raging Head LP or his more recent band and spiritual successor to that one-off record, Metho. But none of these comparisons truly stick here. This record is freakin' unique is what i'm sayin'.
This Los Angeles supergroup of sorts (members have previously played in Ex-Cult, Bad Sports, Shark Toys, OBN IIIs and Richard Rose, among others) has been around for a couple years already but i never quite got over the pervasive dad rock vibes (or at the very least a quite dad-ish, middle-of-the-road variety of garage punk) of their previous two records. That new one is a whole different kind of beast altogether though and what may come across as a bit half-hearted and undercooked on previous releases suddenly clicks into razor-sharp focus on this, their second LP via In The Red Records, firing off one catchy-as-fuck killer tune after another, presented in their most flattering light by way of an unrelentingly tight and explosive performance and a high-end, punchy production that only works to add sharp contours to their sound rather than watering it down or sanding off the edges (I'm looking your way, Hymns From The Hills). This is nothing less than a top-tier little time capsule of 2010s-era garage punk you could almost call oldschool again at this point, pulled off with incredible momentum, workmanlike ease and unerring consistency worthy of a bunch of seasoned genre veterans.
This group from Kansas City has hammered together a thoroughly impressive debut Cassette here, available via the local powerhouse Dirtbag Distro, made up of eleven punches of deliciously raggedy and pissed oldschool-ish hardcore. I do think the bandcamp blurb mentioning Minor Threat and Black Flag kinda undersells this record though, which actually comprises of a lot more than just your average retro early '80s hardcore rehash, keeping things thrilling and unpredictable all the way thanks to tons of neat little quirks and creative brainfarts, enhanced with a constant garage-y, KBD-ish undercurrent and pulling it all off in a way that to me feels as much in conversation with the weirder end of the more contemporary hardcore spectrum as it certainly is with the ancient classics and as far as those are concerned, there's always a peculiar, eccentric quality to these tunes and an offbeat layer of dissonant noise that often reminds me way more more of oddities of the Gray Matter, Flipper and Really Red variety (though i do get the Germs comparison), rather than the usual suspects of old.
Billiam, busy as ever, has just recently blessed us with a new lathe cut 5" on Low Ambition Records and there's also a new LP waiting to drop sometime via Erste Theke Tonträger. Before that though, we get this neat odds-and-ends compilation of outtakes, compilation tracks, alternate versions… you know the drill. Some of it you may have heard before in one form or another, some you probably didn't but one thing's for sure: Many players in the current garage punk field would be willing to sell their kidneys for these quality scraps and leftovers conveniently compiled on yet another kickass LP.
What Evil Eye from Charlotte, North Carolina pull off on their debut cassette is easy to describe on the surface as a straightforward strain of Garage Punk combining '77-ish energy and catchyness with a KBD-like rawness and tons of Dead Boys- and Wipers-level Hooks, though as old as it all sounds on paper, as fresh and alive it all feels in practice and it's all thanks to some top-notch oldschool songcraft at its core and an adequately rough and propulsive performance to make the tunes stick.
Shrudd from Louisville, Kentucky already have been a more than notable presence in the garage punk scene for a while but they really hit it out of the ballpark with their first longplayer No Man Is Good Three Times from last winter, leaving behind much of their humble eggpunk beginnings for a more fleshed-out, sophisticated sound very much on the psychedelic, spaced-out side of the garage- and post punk spectrum. A tough record to follow really, but with their first substantial release since then (leaving aside that silly christmas single from late last year) they're doing a perfect job at that with two flawless new rippers in the previously established sonic spectrum of elaborate and kinda elegant post-/garage punk vaguely in the neighborhood of such groups as Mononegatives, Useless Eaters, Institute, Corker, Marbled Eye, Tube Alloys or Electric Prawns 2, but also very much their own thing really.
