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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now this is some pretty incredible shit right here. The minimalistic DIY garage rock on this tape by some NYC dude (or band, not sure about that) sounds kinda like some lost proto punk relic and would just as well blend in on any one of those Messthetics/Homework compilations. The sparse percussion, weary vocals, overall lean arrangements and Lo-Fi production values all do their part in lending these songs a particular quality that feels both gritty and drowsy.
Whoa, what a beautifully crude piece of DIY lo-fi fuckery in the twilight zones of slightly no-wave-ish post punk and garage rock, this digital release by some unknown Hicksville, NY entity. Kinda like an incredibly weird incarnation of The Woolen Men intermingling with Half Japanese and The UV Race. This is just gorgeous!
