This London group recorded their debut LP in a single day at Abbey Road. Does that actually matter all that much? I don't think so but anyway, this thing sounds kinda neat, unexpectedly raw and unpolished. Right out of the gate, Defenestration greets us with a melodic and slightly folk-ish post punk vibe somewhere inbetween the worlds of Mission Of Burma, Sebadoh, Volcano Suns, Angst, Polvo or Medications, followed by a somewhat Wire-esque post punk exercise with hints of mid-2000s Indie Rock in Sinnes, the latter of which places this among my least favorite things on here along with the somewhat sleepy and undercooked Cruel Tutelage. Thankfully, Liar then picks up speed again in a mix of oldschool garage punk and a Mudhoney-esque Fuzz Punk-/Neo-Grunge vibe, some of which also resonates through the straightforward punk smasher Bumble Been before Red Fuzz leads into the overall much stronger secod half of the album with its catchiest pop tune so far. Pink Liquor then is a compact no-frills burst of noisy garage punk excellence and Automated Response sounds like yet another early Wire tribute right out of the Pink Flag Playbook, a much more well-balanced one this time though. Cavern Killer adds a bit of a rather contemporary sounding post punk and noise rock vibe to the mix before I Love You ends the record with a flawless oldschool oddity of the heavily '77 and KBD-influenced variety.
Not too long after their already quite joyous third EP, the Kalamazoo, Michigan group is already following up on that with an even stronger 2-track digital single that once again feels like a throwback to the glory days of '80s-to-mid-'90s post punk, college-, indie- and alternative rock with the likes of Mission Of Burma, My Dad Is Dead, Sebadoh or Volcano Suns looming large over the opening track Party Store, while Good People sounds a bit like Flipper or Broken Talent filtered through a more approachable early Mudhoney- or mid-'90s Royal Trux vibe.
These folks based in Biel, Switzerland have created a true slow burn-type of a record here via the local imprint Chrüsimüsi Records that frequently takes its sweet time to get to the point but pays off handsomely when you stick with it. The sluggish crawl of an opening tune Different Times immediately reminds me of the dusty, desert-flavored americana rock of Weak Signal, which then gets transformed into very much of a post punk context in the following tune Bubbles while songs like Peace Of Mind have some obvious Velvet Underground energy flowing through them and a undercurrent of oldschool art- and glam rock that's also ever-present in The Candidate. At other times, i'm frequently reminded of Berlin's folk-ish Post Punkers Dead Finks, the earlier work of London's Witching Waves, a decelerated variant of The Cowboy or Flatworms, the earthy garage rock of Honey Radar or the spiky art punk of Far Corners and Germ House... even the first Peace de Résistance LP may at times resonate with this.
Strange beast, the debut EP of this group with members scattered across Australia and the USA (Sydney, Portland and Melbourne, more specifically), on which everything just feels a bit off... in a good way! Right frome the Intro there's an unmistakable Mission Of Burma- and Moving Targets vibe goin' on and echoes of further '80s oddities of the Really Red, Angst and Saccharine Trust variety. Also, there's some undercurrent of Sonic Youth-esque guitar harmonies and '90s Postcore elements á la Unwound, Drive Like Jehu or later Gray Matter work in unison with their more melodic counterparts like Chavez and Polvo, two Bands whose work also echoes heavily through the even stronger second half of this Record from Closer oneward, where their whole sound veers a lot closer towards melodic Seam- and Superchunk-infused Indie Rock with some additional traces of No Age and Swervedriver maybe? Anyway, this is some thorougly enjoyable shit.
This Vancouver group creates a delightful and eccentric blend of fuzzed-out, garage-infused oldschool indie rock, post- and art punk on their debut EP with the opening tune Running and Running having much of an early Woolen Men or Shark Toys vibe, while Dud reminds me a lot of Volcano Suns. In Roundabout, some '80s Nomeansno appears to collide with a classic cowpunk vibe. The closing track Anyone Anywhere has certain Scratch Acid-meets-Jawbox feel goin' on and there's no denying the whole EP also has some faint Mission Of Burma background radiation detectable.
I'm having kind of a hard time warming up to the opener's fluffy '90s beats and alternative radio rock vibes but thankfully, it gets a lot better from there on with Tryna Do sounding like the seeds of a power pop tune reconfigured into a fuzz-laden Saints or Stooges context. Put it Back does similar things but adds a slight touch of a Flying Nun Records-esque quality to the mix before the EP concludes with its most accomplished tune Gracia, which is sounds like four decades of catchy college rock-adjacent guitar strummery perfectly boiled down to a compact two minutes.
Now that's an impressively confident second EP by this Philadelphia group, newly (re-)issued on a neat pink cassette now by pop-ish punk specialist label Dead Broke Rekerds, presenting a dense package of high calorie catchy earworms that combine a slight hint of early '90s indie rockers á la Superchunk, Sebadoh, Seam and Superdrag with an even stronger dose of present-day power pop sensations like Teenage Tom Petties, Bad Sports, Teen Line, Night Court, Tommy And The Commies, Ex-Gold and Mr. Teenage and it's their infallible songwriting capability that really elevates these tunes.
Right away the debut EP of this group based in Eugene, Oregon radiates a vibe reminding me of a number of short-lived noisy and melodic punk groups from the early 2010s like Milk Music, Fins and Dharma Dogs as well as the fairly recent bands Jolana Star and Psychic Dogs who seem determined to revive that timeless sound of borderline post punk-ish catchy punk tunes paying tribute to the eighties Homestead, SST Records and Touch & Go eras. So now you can add Liquid Cross to that list but also, there's a notable hint of early-days Protomartyr present here, most notably their second and third LPs, in no small part due to the singer's voice channeling a weary and melancholic quality quite similar to Protomartyr's Joe Casey.
The second LP of Minnesota's Yuasa-Exide starts off with a thrusting burst of fuzzed-out catchy mid-tempo punk channeling a mix of mid-fi era Guided By Voices, the more power pop-ish ends of the Bevis Frond universe and a slight hint of Eric's Trip or classic-era Dinosaur Jr. to boot in the opening track The Picture You Painted, just to increasingly and deliberately destabilize the sonic landscape on subsequent tracks. Their tunes and arrangements based somewhere inbetween the realms of '80s to '90s indie- and college rock, Flying Nun Records-style psychedelia and busy C86-ish strummery gain a more shambolic, hazy and surreal quality, always in acute danger of falling apart at the seams. Yet, quite wondrously, the looming sword of damocles never seems to strike, the tunes somehow always maintain their fragile equilibrium. The ability to pull that shit off already kinda struck me as their superpower on the previous Hyper At The Gates Of Dawn LP released earlier this year and i think it holds even more true here, a rare quality i previously found in early works by the likes of Rat Columns and The Molds over a decade ago and, maybe, the comparatively straightforward Psych Pop nuggets of Blank Realm's 2014 Grassed In LP which, then again, brings us back full circle on the aforementioned Flying Nun vibes.
Ever since i first stuck my nose in their immense output sometime last year, New Jersey group Monda have proven their worth as not only one of the most productive, but also most consistent purveyors of catchy and fuzzed-out delicacies sitting somewhere inbetween garage punk, oldschool indie rock, noise- and power pop. One other thing you're quickly gonna notice about them is that they really like to rearrange the sonic furniture a bit between releases to keep things fresh and exciting which, among other things, has led to a heavily spaced-out, psychedelic-leaning stretch in their discography most noticeable in and around 2024's Ponderous Leviathan LP. Their newest one now sees them kinda going back to the basics and once again they're getting all of them so fucking right, channelling some pronounced '50s-'60s bubblegum pop vibes just as much as 'eighties Flying Nun and Sarah Records-type art-/indie pop artifacts and various C86-style oddities in a flawless string of strikingly simple but lovingly crafted new tunes that just hit their marks dead-on without exception.
