Pablo X - Pablo X

Min­i­mal­ist psy­che­del­ic hyp­no­tism of a par­tic­u­lar­ly repet­i­tive and stub­born, time­less va­ri­ety by french­man Re­my Pablo who, if i'm not mis­tak­en, is al­so play­ing in groups such as The Anomalys and Weird Omen. You can hear clear echoes of ol late-'70s and '80s un­der­ground groups á la MX-80, Chrome, ear­ly Tele­scopes and Met­al Ur­bain while fur­ther com­par­isons might just as well be made to more re­cent acts like Peace de Ré­sis­tance, A Place To Bury Strangers, Jean Mignon and Writhing Squares.

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The Stools - R U Saved?

It's a new LP by the De­troit group and as you might al­ready sus­pect, there's not a whole lot in the way of sur­pris­es here, which is to­tal­ly fine for their par­tic­u­lar lo­cal flavour of garage may­hem. As far as fair­ly tra­di­tion­al, heav­i­ly Stooges-/M­C5-in­formed garage punk (and just maybe, a hint of Feed­time?) goes, it doesn't get much bet­ter in terms of raw, pri­mal en­er­gy. This is the kind of record which con­vinces al­most ex­clu­sive­ly by virtue of brute force and boy do i feel saved now, which is to say: Ouch!

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Thee Khai Aehm - Samhainia!

More beau­ti­ful de­light­ful garage punk may­hem by the dun­geon-dwellers from Karl­sruhe, Ger­many, this time in a slight­ly less lo-fi yet per­fect­ly po­tent sound aes­thet­ic. Once again you might be re­mem­bered of acts like Strange At­trac­tor, Salamirecorder and, most of all, var­i­ous in­car­na­tions of Thee Oh Sees over the years. My Spell, then again, sounds a bit as if the lat­ter had been cross­bred with the no-wave in­fused drones of noise rock­ers Spray Paint.

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Jeffy & The Sunken Heads - Jeffy & The Sunken Heads

My best ef­fort to de­scribe this work of the dev­il chan­neled by some St. Louis, Mis­souri dude is this: An over­abun­dance of stu­pid de­ment­ed shit con­densed in­to fun lit­tle garage tunes in the vague neigh­bour­hood of Buck Biloxi, Strange At­trac­tor or, al­ter­nate­ly, Dead Moon & The Dead Milk­men, maybe with some Wild Man Fish­er thrown in for good mea­sure. I think i'm just about dumb enough to ap­pre­ci­ate that!

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Germ House - Germ House

The newest EP of Rhode Is­land one-man-band Germ House aka Justin Hub­bard car­ries an­oth­er strong batch of songs in their trade­mark jux­ta­po­si­tion of rus­tic post punk ab­strac­tion and a folky un­der­cur­rent. Es­pe­cial­ly in the first half, these songs feel a tad more de­vel­oped than usu­al this time while still re­tain­ing their over­all quirk­i­ness and their min­i­mal­ist, frag­men­tary charme.

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Peace De Résistance - Bits and Pieces

When this New York dude's en­chant­i­ng and be­wil­der­ing 2020 de­but EP Hedge­mak­ers hit, i didn't have the slight­est clue who's the mas­ter­mind be­hind Peace De Ré­sis­tance. Turns out it's none oth­er than In­sti­tute vo­cal­ist Moses Brown - yeah, kin­da makes sense in ret­ro­spect, i guess. Dun­no how i missed that. His first long­play­er now un­folds a some­what more elab­o­rate, yet still pret­ty min­i­mal­ist sound­scape that once again feels out of place in all the best ways - a time cap­sule of hazy false mem­o­ries weav­ing ear­ly strains of pro­to-, art- and post punk in­to a vivid, se­mi-plau­si­ble case of the Man­dela ef­fect.

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208 - Nearby

I got­ta say i'm more than de­light­ed with the ver­sa­tile and smart and weird ways in which garage punk has evolved over more re­cent years but, you know, some­times i'm just crav­ing for some­thing more old­school and pri­mal. De­troit duo 208's new cas­sette on Painters Tapes does a fab­u­lous job scratch­ing that par­tic­u­lar itch, con­tain­ing the raw, prim­i­tive, sweaty and drunk­en blues va­ri­ety of garage punk, the kind you need to have a soul but no brain to ap­pre­ci­ate. Yeah, i'm aware that the soul is a pure­ly re­li­gious con­struct that has ze­ro ev­i­dence go­ing for it in re­al life. So let's say in­stead that you need a bro­ken soul­ful brain to ap­pre­ci­ate it, or some­thing like that, okay?. The fi­deli­ty of this is just per­fect, the kind of pro­duc­tion where heavy clip­ping both dig­i­tal and ana­log is a fea­ture, not a bug - a fuzz-saw man­gler of jams which might evoke com­par­isons to most­ly old­er shit like Obli­vians, Gories, Pussy Ga­lore, Feed­time, Reatards and what­not.

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The Mute Servants - The Mute Servants

This dude from Wat­ford, UK does a lot of things wrong here and i to­tal­ly fuck­ing love it. You know, like… squeez­ing 8 songs, 12 min­utes of fuzzed out garage rock on a 7" and have that thing spin at 33 RPM for ex­tra neg­a­tive fi­deli­ty. Al­so, who needs so­phis­ti­ca­tion and nu­ance in their mu­sic if we can sim­ply have every­thing be very, very loud at all times? Why write a song us­ing three chords if we can do it with just one? Yeah, don't ex­pect any­thing too smart about this EP but the sheer sham­bol­ic in­ten­si­ty makes up for it per­fect­ly. At some points this sounds like an MC5 wor­ship­ping in­car­na­tion of ear­ly The Men clash­ing with De­struc­tion Unit while more re­cent groups like Hamer and Su­per-X aren't too far off ei­ther.

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Jackson Reid Briggs - Fear​/​​Move

I got­ta ad­mit i had some trou­ble warm­ing up to the last few Jack­son Reid Brig­gs re­leas­es, whose pro­duc­tion seemed just a bit too-much-of-every­thing for my taste. On this newest EP how­ev­er, record­ed dur­ing a breather be­tween Australia's covid lock­downs with a line-up which, i as­sume, is dif­fer­ent from his usu­al "Heaters", is just burst­ing with fresh en­er­gy chan­neled in­to four of his strongest jams, pre­sent­ed in a much slimmed down, un­ex­pect­ed­ly play­ful fash­ion.

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Germ House - World's A Chore

An­oth­er ex­cel­lent EP by Rhode Island's Germ House, a so­lo project of Justin Hub­bard who al­so hap­pens to be play­ing in Far Cor­ners. These three songs once again sparkle with his fa­mil­iar stripped-down lo-fi charme and a son­ic range that stretch­es from abra­sive post- and art punk - which sure­ly owes a thing or two to The Fall or Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles - to clas­sic garage rock and con­tem­po­rary garage punk, while al­so re­veal­ing a sur­pris­ing catchy­ness, deep melan­choly and a play­ful vibe rem­i­nis­cent of The Woolen Men.