Balloon Thief - Balloon Thief

Fol­low­ing up on a neat first EP from last year, this Prov­i­dence, Rhode Is­land group's sec­ond batch of tunes is a marked re­fine­ment in pret­ty much every as­pect, their mix of garage punk and pow­er pop hav­ing reached a whole new lev­el of catchy­ness that al­so wouldn't sound out of place next to shit like Sweet Reaper, Pow­er Pants, Gee Tee, Alien Nose­job, Set-Top Box or Sa­tan­ic To­gas.

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Busted Head Racket - Junk Food

A strong pack­age of catchy weirdo synth punk tunes by that group from New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia who made a great im­pres­sion al­ready with their songs on a split EP with Cologne's Teo Wise. Its two songs are fea­tured here aswell, in sig­nif­i­cant­ly more crunchy record­ings - a de­light­ful mid-fi aes­thet­ic some­what rem­i­nis­cent of, say, ear­ly Nots, Slimex, Toe Ring, Daugh­ter Bat and the Lip Stings.

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Beer - Beer I

For our week­ly dose of egg-re­lat­ed brain­fuck, some dude or group from Charleston, South Car­oli­na is vol­un­teer­ing and they've brought beer with them, nice! Though not ex­act­ly rein­vent­ing the wheel here, this is an­oth­er rock sol­id new pack­age of quirky funky lo-fi garage pop good­ness that fans of shit á la Prison Af­fair, Set-Top Box, Nuts, Eu­gh or Pringue are guar­an­teed to have a mas­sive ball with.

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Exwhite - This Is Future

Last year's steam­roller of a (mini-)LP named Estray is a tough act to fol­low up for sure but the (prob­a­bly) Leipzig/Ber­lin-based group man­ages to do so ad­mi­arably well on their newest al­bum, re­tain­ing all of their pre­vi­ous qual­i­ties while ex­pand­ing their garage punk sound with quite a bit of an abra­sive noise rock edge which re­minds me a lot of NY noise-/garage punk act Brandy and ear­li­er Sci­ence Man. A good deal of melod­ic pop smash­ers á la Wouldn't You, Fo­mo or Get Clean is still present here so fans of that catchy, some­what Boo­ji Boys-es­que pow­er pop won't feel duped ei­ther.

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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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Sex Mex - We're A Happy Family

Over the course of the past year or two, San An­to­nio, Texas group Sex Mex have proven to be a re­li­able bet with their knack for catchy garage-/synth punk and fuzz pop tunes. Their newest batch doesn't dis­ap­point ei­ther, de­liv­er­ing a pop good­ness high­ly in­debt­ed, among oth­er things, to the more melod­ic end of the Reatard-re­lat­ed uni­verse, Lost Sounds be­ing the most ob­vi­ous com­par­i­son here but al­so new­er shit á la The Gobs, Witch Piss or Ghoulies wouldn't be too far off.

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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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Klint & Orrendo Subotnik - Split

Synth punk mae­stro Klint doesn't need an in­tro­duc­tion here at this point, i guess. His half of this awe­some split cas­sette gives us an­oth­er three ar­ti­facts skimmed off the top of that bot­tom­less pit of pure cre­ativ­i­ty that dude seems to mag­i­cal­ly con­jure up as soon as some­one al­lows him to plug a ca­ble in­to any­thing.
Or­ren­do Sub­ot­nik from Pisa, Italy then craft a very dif­fer­ent, yet no less ex­cit­ing sound­scape. Hav­ing sent some shock­waves al­ready with their ul­tra-rough sec­ond tape last year, their sound comes in­to much sharp­er fo­cus here. A weird mix­ture that is, charg­ing up the noise pop and fuzz punk of acts like ear­ly No Age, Male Bond­ing or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, noisy and dark­ly melod­ic post punk á la Die! Die! Die!, Piles or Times Beach, with a de­cid­ed­ly hard-/post­core kind of en­er­gy and a sense of widescreen dra­ma you might ex­pect of Low­er or ear­ly Iceage… among tons of oth­er stuff i've yet to un­pack.

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Tee Vee Repairman - What's On TV

Not long af­ter the re­cent 7" on Good­bye Boozy Records we get the first LP of Sydney's Tee Vee Re­pair­man on that oth­er garage punk pow­er­house la­bel To­tal Punk. As you might've guessed this is an­oth­er juicy treat of sim­ple and stu­pid melod­ic garage punk and pow­er pop de­light well suit­ed for fans of shit like Bad Sports, Tom­my and the Com­mies and Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys while of the dude's own oth­er projects, you might be most re­mind­ed of a sug­ar-coat­ed ver­sion of Sa­tan­ic To­gas or re­cent R.M.F.C..

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