On their second LP, this New Jersey group dabbles in a make of garage punk that feels weirdly old-fasioned and pleasantly out of touch with most genre developments of the last decade or two. Really, this artifact could have been released anytime between the classic Reatard(s) era and the last gasp of Male Bonding- or No Age-esque melodic fuzz punk in the early 2010s. Now it feels like a bit of an oddity in our times and you all know that's the kind of shit i like best, especially if it comes with such an abundance of strikingly simple, charmingly sloppy and viciously catchy pop tunes of fuzzy, melodic bliss.
The early teaser tracks for the debut longplayer of this Melbourne group featuring members of Piss Wizard and Stray Dogs To Good Homes had already signaled kind of a drastic departure from the simple Wipers-infused garage punk of their previous EP and indeed this record is a different beast altogether, taking on more of a dusty, americana-tinged post punk vibe with echoes of eighties Scientists but also plenty of more recent stuff like the noisy post punk of Copenhagen's Lower and the early works of Iceage; Sklitakling and Pleaser from Sweden, americana- and cowpunk-influenced US groups like Weak Signal and Bambara, or Australia's own Optic Nerve and Refedex. A rich tapestry of plausible, well-established influences to draw from for sure but these folks absolutely make it their own with tons of resilient song substance providing the foundation to expand upon for their noisy eruptions, determined performances, a fully matching vehicle of haunting sonics for the frank, urgent lyrics and vocals of frontwoman Freya Tanks.
After going all-in on some darker acid rock vibes on their 2024 Buying Time EP, this Stockholm group's newest one once again steers largely clear of their egg-ish beginnings while returning to a bit of a lighter touch all the same - as much as they be trippin' here, it's an altogether pleasurable and joyous trip this time and whatever there may be left of potantially hazardous '60s psychedelic indulgences in their catchy garage punk is always counterbalanced and lightened up by playful synth accents and other quirky devo-isms that more than once strike me as a more lighthearted equivalent to the recent works of their city neighbors and local synth punk legends Isotope Soap.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsynvania punks follow up their raw and excellent debut with an even stronger, if maybe stylistically somewhat fragmented new 7", with the straightforward proto-meets-post punk vibes á la The Cowboy, Flat Worms, Punter or Open Your Heart-era The Men in the opener Voice Of Change probably bearing the closest similarity to the predecessor here, before Burning In The City exhibits more of an australian-sounding, melodic slacker rock vibe somewhere inbetween Dumb Punts, Gee Tee and Pist Idiots. The closing tune Moon Landing then is a sprawling 7-minute instrumental jam of monotonous yet also weirdly uplifting, kraut-y space rock excess.
Damn, has this band from Alicante, Spain upped their game since their promising but still inconsistent 2024 EPs! This is a make of Garage- and Eggpunk that on one hand operates very much inside the templates set by predominantly spanish groups á la Prison Affair, Sprgrs, Finale, Pringue or US-based acolytes Beer, but does so with a raw and propulsive force missing from many lesser players in the subgenre and these dudes also got the catchy-ass tunes to match the breakneck energy of their performance.
Physicalist is a new group from Vancouver i presume, centering around Dave P of the local power pop sensation Night Court whose catchy qualities are also present on this record of otherwise pretty different sonics, an infectious blend of hard-, art- and postcore with a distinct garage punk edge and melodic overtones which overall reminds me of a bunch of groups like Mystic Inane, Rolex, Launcher on the more hard-/artcore side of things and The Dumpies, Sauna Youth and Eyeball on the catchier, pop- and garage leaning side.
I don't have that much insightful to say about this nice EP other than this Boise, Idaho group dabbles in a certain sub-niche carved out previously by groups like Prison Affair, Beer and maybe Set-Top Box, playing out kinda like an extra-crude version of that particular stretch of the eggpunk landscape and succeeding exactly because of that dissonant crudeness, even if it ain't adding anything new or novel to the mix here.
Rough-ass KBD-infused oldschool garage punk shit that sounds to me as if the early works of Strange Attractor got fused with the primitive-as-fuck aesthetics and raw energy of early The Dogs or American Muscle, albeit with an altogether more solid and reliable bunch of tunes to draw from than what the aforementioned two acts had to work with in their earliest days. This shit kicks some serious ass, plain and simple.
The trajectory Brooklyn punks Shop Talk have taken over the years has certainly been among the less likely ones, having first come to my attention with their self-titled 2016 debut mini-LP, still featuring what i'd describe as a more leaned-back garage punk style very much of its time, somewhere inbetween equal parts Gun Club and contemporary acts of the time like Woolen Men and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. After that, it took them like seven years before their next release, 2023's incredible The Offering EP which saw both a thorough overhaul and significant maturation of their sound defined by catchy-ass '77-ish hooks rarely heard in such a rousing manner since the glory years of Dickies, Buzzcocks and Adverts, which would already be more than enough for them to perfectly stand out from the pack but it's actually only half of their appeal here and wouldn't be complete without the equally melodic, elaborate guitar work of front man Jon Garcia and his vicious yet soul- and tuneful singing. A winning formula to which they've stuck ever since and now their second or first longplayer, depending on how you count, feels like the logical culmination of all those years of infectious songcraft, half of it consisting of new material and the other half of kickass new recordings of some of their greatest hits so far, stretching back as far as their aforementioned debut record. The result sounds like a million bucks and as far as straightforward but elegant punk rock with a clear vision goes, i doubt you'll get to hear much better this year. An instant classic if i ever heard one.
The Debut LP of these portuguese fellows delights with a flawless blend of synth-enhanced garage punk that on one hand often feels like a welcome throwback to an earlier, late-2010s era of electrified, egg-ish punk delirium of the Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp. variety with additional touches of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Kid Chrome's heavy-duty riffing, while all the same feeling stylistically equally well-connected to somewhat more recent artifacts by the likes of Beef, The Gobs, Kerozine, Factory City Children and, most of all, 3D and The Holograms. So, certainly not reinventing the wheel here but nonetheless this is fun and well-executed shit that any genre aficinado shouldn't miss out on.
