Austin, Texas group D.A.R.Y.L. had made a strong impression already with last year's Rock N Roll High School mini-LP and now build on that same foundation of synth-enhanced fuzz punk, noise pop and garage punk to even greater effect with their second release. Below the thick layer of blown-out, sledghammer sound aesthetics you'll find a perfect track record of simple, dangerously catchy tunes and melodies, a way broader stylistic variety and much improved songwriting qualities compared to the, at times, still somewhat one-dimensional vibes of the debut. This now kinda sounds like only one half Buck Biloxi / Giorgio Murderer and the other half smelling of Gobs and Exwhite... or Booji Boys, Dadgad maybe? Everyhing about that mixture sounds so fucking right to me!
Toronto group Eye Ball had made myself - and probably everyone else listening - hungry for more of their shit with their two digital 2-track singles last year, which then got compiled into a four-track tape pretty soon after that. Now we get their first full LP worth of material and the previous comparisons to the likes of Marked Men, Radioactivity, Sonic Avenues and maybe early Sweet Reaper still hold mostly true, but there's so much more going on here too with most of these tunes having a lot more grit and a rougher edge to them, a more determined attack. Don't worry, there's still plenty of hooks and melodies to go around and the thing is packed with hits, but you know something's cooking when right out of the gate the album greets us with a pretty hardcore-ish title tune and subsequently, sometimes seems to channel the the vigorous thrust of previous-decade garage punk acts like Sauna Youth and early Tyvek. The one-two punch consisting of Road Pig and Bruise for a Birthmark almost has a bit of a Cruelster-esque energy and of even more recent stuff, these sogs had me thinking of The Dumpies a lot. Quality shit, no doubt!
Last December's Debut EP Shoot Me I'm Plain of this Chico, California group was such a thorougly pleasant surprise coming pretty much out of nowhere and i actually have absolutely nothing new to say now about their first full length record which has just dropped. Once again, this is an insanely appealing and more than just competent variant of that last-decade schtick made up of elements of super-catchy fuzz punk, noise pop and psychedelic surf vibes. A sound that's become a bit scarce in more recent years but keeps cropping up every now and then in the most unlikely places, like stubborn weeds proving themselves hard to root out entirely by an unsympathetic zeitgeist. Think early Wavves, Male Bonding, No Age, early Terry Malts or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! in addition to such surfboard-wielding indie- and psych rockers á la Crystal Stilts, Surfer Blood and The Fresh And Onlys. That kind of shit.
Yet another kickass split 7" coming to us via Goodbye Boozy records. On it, Leipzig, Germany group Autobahns set off one oldschool hardcore smasher followed by an angular garage punk hit with a slightly southern-ish flavor. Speaking of southern-ish - that is exactly one of the garage punk sub-niches Elvis 2 have been occupying for just over a year now and the two new songs of the australian garage-/fuzz punk group are more of that addictive shit that had us begging for more pretty much ever since their first digital single cropped up on bandcamp, an Elvis 2-shaped hole in our hearts which their recent debut LP still ain't nearly enough to fully occupy.
This sheffield dude delighted in 2020/'21 with three excellent EPs of covid lockdown-spawned melodic garage punk and it appears these four tunes have also been languishing on some hard drive in half-finished form since back then and have only recently been given the finishing touches. So no surprises here really - these songs feel like a seamless continuation of that same greatness, once again taking the form of super-catchy no-frills punk tunes that seem to have equal amounts of Buzzcocks and solo-era Jay Reatard in them as well as the high-impact garage blasts of Kid Chrome and, most recently, the simple, fuzzed-out garage-/noise pop hymns of Sex Mex.
That Evinspragg record has garnered the most publicity of the newest Inscrutable Records batch for several reasons, some of them justifiable, others more annoyingly drama-related. But to be perfectly honest, that one is a bit too ambitious for its own good in my humble opinion and a bit of a mixed bag which starts out incredibly strong, then kinda fizzles out towards the end and i actually feel much more drawn towards the label's other two releases among which is this full-length debut by Johnny Skin. On it, they create a dreamy, melancholy and super-catchy melange blending the yearning vibe of '50s-'60s bubblegum pop ballads with rudimetary, minimalist lo-fi vintage electronic drum beats and synths in a fashion that's gonna draw inevitable comparisons to Suicide and Métal Urbain, interspersed with a bunch of more noisy and dissonant no wave-ish tunes more in the vein of noisy synth punk pioneers á la Primitive Calculators or Nervous Gender and the experimental, psychedelic sounds of Theoretical Girls, Chrome or MX-80.
I somehow skipped over the previous Monda LP here so i take this newest EP as an opportunity to remind you that this Totowa, New Jersey dude is still around and doing cool shit all along the way, with his newest one being the most catchy and straightforward release in a while, consisting of five undeniable earworms between the rough coordinates of oldschool indie rock, garage punk and power pop that more often than not radiates a melancholy, dreamy atmosphere. High quality shit as usual, this time around reminding me quite a bit of Cincinnati power pop overlords Vacation.
This Evesham, New Jersey Group has already racked up a substantial bandcamp discography but damn, is this new LP a massive jump in quality! On it, they craft a wall of catchy noise pop and fuzz punk inbetween the worlds 2000s-'10s noise pop and indie rock acts á la Milk Music, Male Bonding, No Age on one hand and golden-era '80s Dinosaur Jr. on the other, though with the particular distinction that every single tune on here seems inspired by Lou Barlow's desperate growls and screams in that brutal closing track of the Bug LP, Don't, rather than the introverted nasal voice of J Mascis. Also, there's a some oldschool My Bloody Valentine action going on in Boy Christening and Mark Prindle has a bit of The Wedding Present being sent into noisy blown-out post punk hellscape.
This Madison, Wisconsin group delivers a thoroughly compelling third EP here, made up of mid-eighties to early-nineties melodic punk and indie rock of the heavily Dinosaur Jr., Superchunk, Jawbreaker, Archers Of Loaf and Sebadoh-informed kind that also also got a second wind roughly two decades later with bands like California X, Kicking Spit, Happy Diving, Fins and - most of all - Milk Music giving this sound a mild resurgence back then. Also, especially in Dust, there's a bit of a Pitchfork / Drive Like Jehu vibe going on. Nowadays, all of this shit strikes me as timelessly old-fashioned in the most pleasing way, its consistently way-above-average quality underpinned all the way through by an ultra-solid set of underlying tunes.
The artwork appears to not very subtly hint at a dungeon-related thing and this almost sounds plausible with the riff-heavy opening track, though after that, the spanish group's newest EP settles into that familiar sound of dreamy, egg-ish noise pop and synthpunk we all know and love them for, albeit with a few unexpected nuances like the aformentioned opening, occasional emo-ish sprinkles, some hints at straightforward, classic indie rock and moments channeling some C86-by-way-of-early shoegaze kind of aesthetic in El Valle De La Muerte and the closing track Sesos En Bandeja.
