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!
Having released a strong debut EP in 2017, Melbourne group Super-X now deliver their first full length, once again packed with tons of spaced-out sonic force. Classic Stooges energy collides with psychedelic fireworks á la early Telescopes, some unexpectedly high amount of post punk and a hint of MX-80, while they manage to keep things interesting and versatile throughout the whole journey, evoking a rather diverse cluster of comparisons such as Public Eye, Writhing Squares, Destruction Unit, Faux Ferocious, Bailterspace, The Cowboy or Open Your Heart-era The Men.
