Antenna - Antenna

Awe­some to hear this dude's an­gel voice again! Just a cou­ple weeks ago, Shogun, best known as the pow­er­house front man of Roy­al Headache, made his tri­umphant re­turn (let's not for­get the neat 2018 Shogun and the Sheets 7" though) with the de­but EP of Finno­guns Wake, the duo com­pris­ing of him and Finn Berzin and now, pret­ty much out of nowhere, there's al­so the de­but EP by an­oth­er band of his, An­ten­na, pop­ping up which, of his projects so far, aligns clos­est to the old­school Roy­al Headache vibe in terms of its song ma­te­r­i­al while mov­ing on from the rough garage sound to­wards a some­what slick­er aes­thet­ic in­be­tween the pa­ra­me­ters of straight-up melod­ic punk rock, noise- and pow­er pop with a kin­da un­ex­pect­ed Leather­face edge to it. Sweet!

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Vaguess - Thanks /​/​ No Thanks

A main­stay of re­cent years in garage punk is back with a some­what more high-pro­file LP via Er­ste Theke Ton­träger fol­low­ing a re­cent string of more un­der­stat­ed cas­sette and dig­i­tal re­leas­es. This thing is as eclec­tic as any of these but at the same time, a lot more fo­cused, de­ter­mined and con­sis­tent than some of those more scrap­py re­cent of­fer­ings. Span­ning a spec­trum from the propul­sive post punk of the open­ing sal­vo (When It's Gone, A.P.A.C.), melan­choly in­die rock bal­lads (Texas Cloud), comp­fy synth pop tunes (Let U Know) to straight­for­ward garage-/fuzz punk ex­plo­sions (Can't Take It, 2 Car Garage), there's plen­ty of meat to dig your teeth in­to, all held to­geth­er by Vin­ny Earley's al­ways con­fi­dent, of­ten plain­ly bril­liant song­writ­ing pow­ers. Last but not least, Week­end Shad­ows and Car­ry­on are fur­ther ex­am­ples of ex­act­ly that kind of supreme pow­er-/fuzz pop hymn the dude has al­ways ex­celled at.

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Datenight - Clueless and Hangless

At first glance i wasn't quite sure if this Nashville group's newest LP isn't gonna be just a bit too mel­low for my taste but even­tu­al­ly, the sheer strength of their Lo-Fi in­die rock songcraft wins me over once again, the whole thing hav­ing the feel of a scrap­py odds-and-ends col­lec­tion which might just be the case. This as­sess­ment is on­ly be­ing re­in­forced by the fact that the songs ap­pear in al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der here - the tunes them­selves are pure A-grade stuff though.

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The Present Age - Radio Static Intelligible

This Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin group is cook­ing up a va­ri­ety of in­ven­tive and adap­tive anochro­nisms rough­ly in the realms post punk and post­core, garage punk and clas­sic '90s in­die rock, com­ing off as re­fresh­ing­ly out-of-place and -touch in today's land­scape. Some '90s Dischord-meets-Touch and Go feel is go­ing on in tracks such as Ph­tha­late Mates and the groovy psy­che­del­ic clos­ing epos Clum­sy As­cetic. A hint of Pro­tomar­tyr in Locks Fas­ten, psy­che­del­ic flour­ish­es in The De­liv­ery and hints of Swervedriv­er in songs like Ra­dio Sta­t­ic. Fur­ther, at dif­fer­ent points, you might be re­mind­ed of re­cent post punk/-core acts like Bat­piss, Stuck and Bench Press, groups on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage- and post punk like Tyvek, Par­quet Courts or Flat Worms in ad­di­tion to groups on the more melod­ic and jan­g­ly edges of post- and art punk á la Go­tobeds, Sleepies, Tape/​Off and Shark Toys.

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M.O.T.O. - The Wall of Phlegm

What a god­damn beau­ty! Paul Ca­por­i­no of cult garage punk /​ pow­er pop vet­er­an project M.O.T.O. at long last has com­piled a new set of beau­ti­ful­ly fuzzy record­ings in the well-worn 4-track so­lo fash­ion, kick­ing things off with a fuckin' Motör­head cov­er of all things and sub­se­quent­ly pulling off what must be his most high-val­ue, hook-laden set of tunes in a long time, noth­ing short of a new lo-fi pop mas­ter­piece if you ask me. Many songs have al­ready ap­peard on one oc­ca­sion or an­oth­er but hon­est­ly, who cares re­al­ly as this thing kin­da plays out like an all-killer-no-filler best of from his re­cent decade-plus of cre­ative out­put, pre­sent­ed in uniqe, un­heard record­ings.

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The Misanthropes - The Misanthropes

Bril­liant new shit from folks who've pre­vi­ous­ly been play­ing, among oth­ers, in Melbourne's in­fa­mous­ly abra­sive post punk act Sew­ers as well as the some­what more ac­ces­si­ble, in­die rock-lean­ing out­fit Love Of Di­a­grams. What we get here is once again pret­ty much off the beat­en path, a heav­i­ly folk-in­fused melange in which the amer­i­cana-drenched punk of, say, Angst col­lides with some 80s Sci­en­tists, a hint of british psy­che­delia and plen­ty of pais­ley un­der­ground jan­gle­ness - a deep melan­cho­lia, at times a lit­tle rem­i­nis­cent of Brisbane's Kitchen's Floor find­ing its out­let in nonethe­less catchy-as-fuck melodies, em­bed­ded in­to a kin­da fuzzy, neb­u­lous sound­scape. Oth­er times, the melod­ic post punk of The Es­tranged comes to mind or the re­laxed psy­che­del­ic garage- and pow­er pop of White Fence, The Cairo Gang. Oth­er plau­si­ble ref­er­ences in­clude more or less re­cent groups á la Damak, ear­li­er Chronophage, Dead Finks, Refedex and The Molds.

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Faulty Cognitions - Demo

This San An­to­nio, Texas group de­lights with a throw­back to the most melod­ic parts of eight­ies punk, in­die- and col­lege rock, clear­ly in­formed by the likes of Hüsker Dü, Re­place­ments, Mov­ing Tar­gets, Guid­ed By Voic­es and Di­nosaur Jr. in the more jan­g­ly melod­ic mo­ments, as well as some ear­ly Naked Ray­gun in the straight-ahead rockin' tunes, all of it held to­geth­er by fric­tion­less song­writ­ing that wouldn't feel too out of place with more re­cent bands á la Boo­ji Boys, Bad Sports, TV Crime or Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys ei­ther.

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Glittering Insects - Glittering Insects

Ab­solute­ly fuck­ing bril­liant shit once again ar­riv­ing at our shores cour­tesy of To­tal Punk Records! Glit­ter­ing In­sects fea­ture mem­bers of GG King, Preda­tor, Wymyns Prysyn and Uni­form (the at­lanta group, not the NY in­dus­tri­al punk/-met­al duo) and of these, it bears the most sim­i­lar­i­ty to the lat­ter two groups with the melan­choly arrange­ments strong­ly echo­ing that dis­tinct Uni­form vibe. Over­all the com­bi­na­tion of grit­ty abra­sive tex­tures, the afore­men­tioned sense of melan­choly, a songcraft that comes across as sad and un­wieldy yet melod­ic and catchy at the same time, re­minds me a lot of aus­tralian noise-/indie rock gods Kitchen's Floor, the scuzzy post punk of City Yelps or, in its most catchy mo­ments, the noise pop of ear­ly Tree­house. An ex­cep­tion­al­ly im­mer­sive and epic ex­pe­ri­ence best tak­en in as a whole - a rare thing these days.

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Pig Earth - Exit Wound

A son­ic ex­pe­ri­ence won­der­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist, craft­ed by some Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton group. Prime in­flu­ence here seems to be a whole bat­tery of ear­ly-to-mid eight­ies, loose­ly SST and Touch & Go-con­nect­ed stuff - on the more strum­my, folk-in­fused side of things ad­mit­ted­ly, but nev­er afraid of spon­ta­neous­ly mor­ph­ing in­to short bursts of hard­core punk ei­ther. Most ob­vi­ous amoung those in­flu­ences would prob­a­bly be shit among the lines of Angst and Meat Pup­pets, ear­ly Di­nosaur Jr. and, sec­on­dar­i­ly, U-Men, Mud­honey and 80s Sci­en­tists, some very slight hints of Dicks and Wipers. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might think of more re­cent Acts like ear­ly Milk Mu­sic, Dhar­ma Dogs, Chronophage and Damak.

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Teksti-TV 666 - Vapauden Tasavalta

A new LP by that finnish group with way to many gui­tar play­ers… dun­no, i think 666 was the num­ber last time i count­ed. Here, the band is shift­ing their sound in­creas­ing­ly in­to a psych rock di­rec­tion. Es­pe­cial­ly in TJ they're div­ing head­first in­to Space Rock ter­ri­to­ry and the ef­fort pays of ad­mirably. In oth­er places, they stay true to their brand of melod­ic in­die rock, fuzz punk and noise pop with echoes of No Age, Wavves, Cal­i­for­nia X, Hap­py Div­ing and some ear­ly The Men, which they then in­fuse with sprawl­ing gui­tar drones rem­i­nis­cent of Glenn Bran­ca and 80s Son­ic Youth.

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