Melbourne group Shepparton Airplane first caught my ear when they exploded right into my face with their 2018 sophomore LP Almurta, then quickly followed by a 2020 album that just didn't hit quite as hard for me - ambitious, sure, but also feeling kinda forced, like it's just been trying a bit too hard. After a radio silence of five years, just when the group had basically dropped off my radar, whe unexpectedly get to witness what is without doubt their most mature, accomplished record to date. Now their sound somewhere inbetween the realms of post punk, noise rock and postcore has always felt a bit old-fashioned, more comfortably fitting in the late 2000s to late-2010s, but that's also part of their charm, delightfully oldschool i'll say and certainly in the same league with some of the best groups said era had to offer like Sleepies, Bench Press, Diät, Batpiss, Rank/Xerox, the early works of USA Nails, Protomartyr and Gotobeds to name just a few... yeah even a slight vibe of Open Your Heart-era The Men may be hidden there in tunes like Stereo Youth. Anyway, each song on here is an elaborate, self-contained post punk drama taking its sweet time to unfold but never failing to lead straight into a rich and spectacular payoff.
Philadelphia's TVO already stuck out from the pack on their previous EPs with a make of post- and garage punk that seemed to take uncommon inspiration from a number of groups of the proto-grunge and proto-noise rock era with clear echoes of U-Men, Scientists, early Mudhoney, Feedtime, Fungus Brains, Scratch Acid and X (AUS), to name just a few of the usual suspects. Their new full length debut still has all of the same goodness on board while also gradually steering their ship into a somewhat unexpected direction by drenching their songs in a generous helping somewhat sleazed-up, bluesy rock'n'roll and what can i say, without exception they deliver the songs and tight-ass performances here to make the shit stick and indeed these tunes are a marked jump forward for the group, showcasing an exceptionally tight grip on their always dead-on songwriting skills.
Digital Hotdogs brings us the newest crime of Austin, Texas cowpunk wrecking crew Leche which, way more than any of their previous works, reminds me quite a bit of another Digital Hotdogs mainstay, Trashdog, not so much in terms of their actual sound and more in their hyperactive, disjointed anything-goes approach dismissing or subverting any established rules and conceptions of genre, structure, continuity, reality itself... so yeah this is yet another glorious genre-bending, fragmented mess that can feel like a bit too much of everything at times. But once you filtered your way thruough all the stuff, there's a really neat single LP hidden in this seemingly indiscriminate dump of a double LP's worth of material. This is maybe not so much (Trashdog's) Weezer's Blue Album and more (Leche's) The Beatles' White Album - a bit too long, kinda messy, in seemingly random sequence and it shouldn't be judged by its weakest parts.
A pretty fucking stunning debut LP from an Alamance, North Carolina duo excelling in a hazy and hypnotic mixture of noise rock, post punk, oldschool indie rock and the darkest alleys of the americana spectrum. The latter tendency often come across like a more vicious and propulsive take on the muddy southern gothic charm of (quite paradoxically) NYC based group Weak Signal but also, at certain points, you may find traces of the blues-y proto-noise rock of Feedtime and Scratch Acid, the swamp rock of eighties Scientists. The overarching melancholy of the whole affair then again reminds me of somewhat indie rock-leaning groups like Australia's Kitchen's Floor, Treehouse and earlier stuff of London's Witching Waves on one hand, the moody, eccentric post punk of acts like Auckland/Berlin-based groups Trust Punks, Dead Finks on the other, with further similarities to the deep abysses of Atlanta's Uniform, Glittering Insects, Mother's Milk or the folk-ish Angst- and Meat Puppets-indebted neo-proto-grunge of Bellingham, Washington group Pig Earth and Madison, Wisconsin's Dharma Dogs. All of that is being rolled expertly into ten all-killer-no-filler widescreen melodramas here with perfect sonic architectures marked by super effective buildups and payoffs.
Not too long after their brilliant debut EP we already get to hear the first full LP of this Minneapolis group which still delights with a pleasantly old-fashioned genre mixture that primarily appears to take inspiration from the more left-field and melancholy edges of '80s -'90s post punk, hard- and postcore history, although the influences are a lot more varied here with the opening song Hello World having a strong '90s Dischord vibe somewhat reminiscent of the likes of Jawbox, Crownhate Ruin, Bluetip, Smart Went Crazy or Kerosene 454 while Tectonic Plates comes across like a curious mixture of Rapeman, Brainiac and Mule. Kick Geneva and Steve remind me a lot of Angst and Moving Targets, BDFI has some Butthole Surfers-esque doominess and it's not before the second-to-last track, the instrumental What Happens Next and the subsequent Mantle, that those Mission Of Burma influences - which were more strongly present on the EP - kick into full gear once again. Anyway, through much of the record, there's a slightly folk-ish undercurrent goin' on aswell that further calls to mind such eighties US groups like The Proletariat, Volcano Suns, M.I.A. and My Dad Is Dead.
Here's a kickass holdover from last week that i failed to give a fair shake until now and honestly, i should have known better as finnish noise rock groups actually have had a pretty strong track record in recent years and beyond the obligatory comparisons to early Shellac and Rapeman, the next best thing i can come up with are indeed two other fellow Helsinki-based groups, Fun and Baxter Stockman and i'm sure you can picture my non-surprise upon learning that members of both groups are featured in this trio aswell. To a lesser extent, there's also a bit of Jawbox or Jesus Lizard here and there and you wouldn't be totally off either to find commonalities with more recent US acts like Multicult, Help, Hoaries or maybe Germany's own Trigger Cut.
A worthy addition to the see/saw-sourced piss bands spreadsheet comes from some Raleigh, North Carolina dude or band creating a fun mix of noise rock and garage punk with hammering Big Black-esque drum machine beats, although i'm gonna say that despite some decidedly Albini-esque guitar noises being contained in here aswell, the overall vibe reminds me more of London's World Domination Enterprises and, to a lesser extent, their fellow brits The Membranes who also had a quite Big Black-ish phase in the late eighties, while the most garage-leaning tracks like Meat Tenderizer evoke the way more stripped-down, minimalistic prototypes of Métal Urbain / Dr. Mix And The Remix with further possible references being the likes Scratch Acid and Brainiac. So yeah, this is good shit!
There's just no other way to put it: Sophisticated oldschool-ish noise rock is going through kind of a rough patch right now with unique and outstanding releases in the genre being precious few and far between. Even in these times though, Germany's genre overlords Trigger Cut just keep delivering the goods, reminding of - and hopefully also paving a way toward - better times. As usual this shit covers a wide range of the hallmarks of golden age groups such as Bastro, Cows, Rapeman, Distorted Pony, Drunks With Guns and Dazzling Killmen, even some slight hints of Tragic Mulatto in Crash Crew for example. Of more recent groups you may find similarities to the likes of Multicult, STNNG, Leaves, Body House, Elephant Rifle, Help and Overtime. All that said, more than ever - as has already been an increasing tendency on their previous LPs, - they absolutely transcend the obvious influences towards an unmistakable voice very much of their own while keeping us on our toes at all times, with each of these songs incorporating more unique decisions, twists and turns than your average contemporary noise rock/postcore act would come up with for a whole LP - you just can't ever predict where they're gonna go next!
What a neat little oddity, this second EP by Chicago group Forklift Rodeo, on which they're mixing some weird-ass unpredictable bursts of cowpunk with small traces of 90s AmRep/Tough&Go-esque noise rock, postcore and occasionally also some kind of contemporary eggpunk quality, though in that regard i'm thinking more of early Skull Cult rather than the somewhat more codified recent crop of Lo-Fi-recorded insanity. Speaking of Lo-Fi... this record certainly ain't that, giving a well-produced sheen and transparency to their equally quirky, sprawling and intricate constructions that would indeed have absolutely no need for hiding behind an obscuring layer of noise and grime.
Here's a sensational debut EP by some band or project based in Lethbridge, Alberta containing six perfect blows of post punk whose ear-piercing walls of noise and pulsing electric beats at times sound a bit as if an eggpunk Big Black collided with the somewhat psychedelic qualities of garage greats like late Useless Eaters, Pow! and Mononegatives - or maybe the murky old experimental punk classics of Métal Urbain / Dr. Mix and the Remix - in a breathless succession of certified bangers. I also have a hunch that fans of spaced-out noisemakers á la Corpus Earthling or french magician Pablo X are gonna lap this shit up.
