Tempe, Arizona group Soft Shoulder have been at it for way over a decade now and still seem as lively and productive as ever, having churned out a steady stream of singles and EPs released digitally and as limited lathe cuts the past year. Their newest LP presents them as focused as they haven't been in a long while though, their quirky-as-fuck mixture of post punk and noise rock bursting with energy as catchy grooves somewhat reminiscent of The Fall from the late eighties onward collides with a decidedly no-wave school of noise and dissonance.
A duo made up of Kimi Recor and Vinny "Vaguess" Earley, you can't really overlook the similarities to the latter dude's recorded output but there's also more going on here. Starting off from a familiar mix of garage- and post punk there's some clear Lithics kind of energy in some places or Welt Star, another Earley-related project comes to mind while songs like Staring at the Sun and Please 3 sound like forgotten Woolen Men tunes that fell through the cracks somewhere and Chameleon has the vibe of a Digital Leather deep cut from an alternate cold-wave reality.
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.
It took me a while to notice but the newest LP by Marseille group Catalogue turns out to be their strongest effort to date. Where their sound could still be a little tiring on their previous LP, they show a lot more variety on their newest one keeping things interesting throughout. Their noisy post punk, as usual being driven forward by eighties-style drum machine beats, may owe a little to Big Black in some parts, Live Skull in others or some no-wave dissonance gets loaded up with catchy hooks. In Houseplants we even get to hear some almost synth-/new wave stylings.
Much stronger than i figured at first glance, the debut tape by Chicago group Cel Ray. This shit is carrying similar vibes to some of the great female-fronted punk groups of our time like Vexx, Negative Scanner, Judy & The Jerks, Amyl and the Sniffers, All Hits, The Neuros, BB and the Blips… while also apparently taking cues from a larger cluster of groups on the intersection of post- and garage punk á la Patti, Reality Group, Uranium Club, Ex-Cult or Mystic Inane.
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.
A new LP by Italia 90, best kept secret of contemporary british post punk, who so far have managed to completely avoid as well as outlive the hype cycle some of their peers have been riding hard over the past few years. Hard to believe at this point that this is actually their first full length release. Overall, they're staying true to themselves here without making things too easy either for themselves or the audience, striking a delicate balance between catchy tunes á la New Factory, Tales From Beyond and more cumbersome sonic assaults like Magdalene and Golgatha. Otherwise, a slightly Wire-esque opening track gives way to a more familiar soundscape owing a lot to the classics of, among others, Swell Maps and Membranes, the occasional hint of Crass. Or alternately, you might also draw some comparisons to more recent acts like Exek, early Protomartyr.
This Greenville, South Carolina group kicks up an excellent racket located somwhere inbetween the gears of garage punk, post punk and postcore bearing some similaritiy to more recent stuff á la Big Bopper, Mystic Inane, Dollhouse, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Crisis Man… just as much as to classic pieces by the likes of Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Nation Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Matter.
There's really no other way to put it… on their latest output the group from Wollongong, Australia leans in quite heavily on the ancient blueprint established primarily by bands like Mission of Burma, Moving Targets, Volcano Suns which, if you ask me, should be more of a thing anyway so yeah, this is good stuff.
Having made somewhat of a splash with their unpredictable 2019 demo and a more conventinally hardcore-leaning EP in 2021, the Richmond, Virginia group is shaking things up once again with their first full-length effort, significantly slowing things down and seemingly taking plenty of cues from left-field 80s acts on the experimental intersection of hardcore punk and (proto-)noise rock in the vein of, among others, Flipper, No Trend, Spike in Vain or Broken Talent, while also not entirely dissimilar to more recent groups like Soupcans, Vulture Shit, C-Krit or Stinkhole.