Erik Nervous - Immaturity

An­oth­er con­stant pres­ence of the garage scene who's been around pret­ty much since the be­gin­ning of this blog has a new LP out and it's such a thing of beau­ty! As ver­sa­tile and in­ven­tive as ever, these new songs more or less con­tin­ue the dude's very own quirky, slight­ly De­vo-fied vi­sion of garage punk that first ful­ly took form on that Be­ta Block­ers LP in 2019 - in­stant­ly rec­og­niz­able yet al­ways a cou­ple steps ahead of the lis­ten­er, al­ways good for a sur­prise or two. Tracks like Hemgeeh und Pro­jec­tor come with kind of a spaced out, psy­che­del­ic Mononeg­a­tives en­er­gy. Al­so, we get a bunch of com­pact and catchy-as-fuck synth-dri­ven smash­ers in the sec­ond half as well as a neat They Might Be Gi­ants cov­er and Al­li­ga­tor Fac­ing East is such an epic fuck­ing hymn for the ages! Fur­ther plau­si­ble ref­er­ence points for the over­all sound of this record would be the likes of Andy Hu­man and the Rep­toids, Freak Genes, Iso­tope Soap and New Vogue.

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Anytime Cowboy - Demons Obey

Over the past two years, Port­land la­bel Spared Flesh Records has proven it­self a re­al pow­er­house of weird and off­beat nois­es in the realm of post-, garage- and art punk and this new LP by Reuben Sawyer aka Any­time Cow­boy is yet an­oth­er rough gem to be­hold. His blue­sey low-key cow­punk sound comes across kin­da like an in­car­na­tion of ear­ly Gun Club in­cred­i­bly mind­ful of not wak­ing the neigh­bors or a su­per-mut­ed ver­sion of Par­quet Courts, Tyvek, while in parts al­so not en­tire­ly dis­sim­i­lar to that re­cent Peace de Ré­sis­tance al­bum. It's a sound­scape that could soft­ly lull you to sleep if it weren't for that per­va­sive sense of un­speak­able abysses lurk­ing just around any cor­ner now, with Sawyers calm deep voice fur­ther adding to the music's quite un­can­ny yet weird­ly com­fort­ing qual­i­ties.

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Pedigree - Run Away

Pedi­gree of Tour­nai, Bel­gium fol­low up their ex­cel­lent 2020 mi­ni-LP with an­oth­er strong batch of tunes, con­tin­u­ing the trend of their orig­i­nal­ly more garage-lean­ing sound grad­u­al­ly mov­ing in­to more of a post punk di­rec­tion and even some flash­es of '90s post­core can be gleamed in songs such as Trapped, S.A.D. and Bread, call­ing to mind bits and pieces of Jaw­box, Dri­ve Like Je­hu, Pol­vo and Hot Snakes. Dis­graced, on the oth­er hand, has more of a melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty right out of the Vaguess, Bad Sports or Mo­tor­bike play­book. And over­all, my pre­vi­ous com­par­isons to french groups á la Telecult, Night­watch­ers still hold true, as well as a bunch of in­ter­na­tion­al acts like Sauna Youth, Teenanger, Video, or Clamm.

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Adhesive - October 2023

Hav­ing done an al­ready pret­ty fuckin' neat first EP ear­li­er this year, this duo (i think…) from Hol­ly­wood, Flori­da fol­lows up on that with an even more weird, ec­c­cen­tric and eclec­tic new cas­sette, once again op­er­at­ing on the fringes of post-, garage-, egg- and art punk. Right out of the gate i'm re­mind­ed of the first Peace de Re­sistánce EP's crude pro­to-meets-post punk sketch­es, com­bined with the re­laxed acid-/space rock lean­ings of the lat­est Scoot­er Jay tape. Dig­ging my Grave sur­pris­es and de­lights with its odd­ball cow­punk feel while the over­all vibe and any­thing-goes ap­proach most of all makes me think of acts á la Print Head, Elec­tric Prawns 2. The brand new Any­time Cow­boy record wouldn't make the worst com­par­i­son ei­ther in some places while oth­er bits and pieces then have a dis­tinct smell of ear­ly Snoop­er, Met­dog, Check­point, Sil­i­cone Prairie… even a tiny smidge of ear­ly Woolen Men!

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Institute - Ragdoll Dance

On their fourth al­bum, the Texas post punk over­lords In­sti­tute present them­selves as strong as ever with plen­ty of tricks left up their sleeve for keep­ing lis­ten­ers on their toes, nev­er know­ing what they're gonna do next. Over­all, the pre­vi­ous LP's trend to­wards a more melod­ic and re­laxed sound is con­tin­ued here, creep­ing a lot clos­er to the aes­thet­ics of singer Mose Brown's NY based project Peace de Ré­sis­tance, tak­ing cues most­ly from the first wave of art- and post punk groups. There's a strong vibe á la Tele­vi­sion, Mod­ern Lovers or ear­ly Soft Boys goin' on in songs like City and Won­der. Dead Zone then feels a bit like Wipers-meet-Saints while All The Time echoes the likes of Met­al Ur­bain, MX-80, Sui­cide and Chrome. Dopamine for my Ba­by weird­ly has a strong touch of con­tem­po­rary NY group Straw Man Army to it. All of it then cul­mi­nates in the epic, slight­ly Wire-es­que clos­ing track War­mon­ger.

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Checkpoint - D R I F T

An­oth­er in­sane qual­i­ty re­lease cour­tesy of Er­ste Theke Ton­träger by a Mel­bourne group fea­tur­ing mem­bers of such house­hold names like Pinch Points, Dr. Sure's Un­usu­al Prac­tice, Gonzo and Drag­net. Right out of the gate we're greet­ed with an ad­ven­tur­ous sound some­where in­be­tween garage-, synth- and art punk call­ing to mind acts like Ghoulies, Set-Top Box, Iso­tope Soap and a bit of Erik Ner­vous. Sec­ond track Friends con­tin­ues in that di­rec­tion, then takes a sharp turn in­to psy­che­del­ic post punk ter­ri­to­ry some­what rem­i­nis­cent of groups like Mar­bled Eye, Yam­mer­er, Waste Man or Pub­lic Eye. Break sur­pris­es with a re­laxed psy­che­del­ic garage- and fuzz pop groove, fol­lowed by Ice Sum­mit, a com­pact, eco­nom­i­cal garage rock­er echo­ing the likes of Par­quet Courts, Tyvek and Shark Toys. Then, shit gets tru­ly weird with Drift - a sprawl­ing garage-and-egg­punk-goes-pro­gres­sive-rock kind of ex­er­cise un­afraid to go re­al cheesy in the ex­pan­sive mid­dle part. Side B then comes across more ho­moge­nous, less am­bi­tious but by no means less en­joy­able, these straight­for­ward bangers re­flect­ing the likes of Cher­ry Cheeks, Smirk, Met­dog, Pow­er­plant and Freak Genes, among a ton of oth­er shit.

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Onyon - Last Days On Earth

Once again, Leipzig group Ony­on con­vince me by virtue of their adapt­abil­i­ty and sol­id Crafts­man­ship rather than nov­el­ty, re­pro­duc­ing a num­ber of tried and test­ed for­mu­las that firm­ly click in­to spec on their sec­ond LP. Post punk that ain't try­ing any­thing fun­ny, you could say. This time we get just a smidge of egg­punk weird­ness added to the mix. Songs like Dog­man then have more of a garage punk edge to them. There's a touch of Wire in Egg Ma­chine, old­school goth-/deathrock vibes in In­vis­i­ble Spook and bits and pieces of Gun Club are sprin­kled through­out the whole of it. Need­less to say, echoes of oth­er more or less re­cent ar­ti­facts of the Leipzig scene like Am­bu­lanz, Lassie and Laff Box are to be found in there aswell.

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New Vogue - Waiting Daze

Mon­tre­al group New Vogue fol­low-up their ex­cel­lent self-ti­tled 2020 mi­ni LP with an­oth­er batch of kick­ass tunes - way more synth-heavy this time yet every bit as in­fec­tious as be­fore, ra­di­at­ing a con­stant­ly shapeshift­ing kind of vibe call­ing to mind bits and pieces of Freak Genes, Use­less Eaters, Pow­er­plant, Andy Hu­man and The Rep­toids, Lost Sounds, Mononeg­a­tives and Alien Nose­job, to name just a few high-pro­file ref­er­ences.

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Flat Worms - Witness Marks

Flat Worms have been among the most re­li­ably awe­some groups of the past decade or so - you rough­ly know what to ex­pect, know it's gonna be good and will have just enough fresh ideas and flour­ish­es to keep things in­ter­est­ing. Need­less to say, their newest LP won't dis­s­a­point ei­ther, their sig­na­ture sound in­be­tween the worlds of garage punk, noise rock and post punk com­ing across as tight and en­er­getic as ever and, just maybe, even a bit more var­ied and play­ful than on pre­vi­ous ef­forts. In SSRT the dis­tinct grooves of Wire and Tele­vi­sion com­bine in­to an ever-so-slight­ly kraut-in­fused ex­er­cise. Time Warp In Ex­ile feels like a fu­sion of The Cow­boy and Spray Paint - the same then kin­da ap­plies to the al­bum clos­ing ti­tle track, which ad­di­tion­al­ly seems to bor­row a thing or two from The Ruts' clas­sic It Was Cold.

Sor­ry folks, there's no em­bed­d­a­ble full al­bum stream avail­able but you can lis­ten to the whole thing over at their Sound­cloud.

Dizzy Daze - Proto-Being

Ex­cit­ing shit in the realm of noise rock, post­core and garage punk on this Tokyo group's newest EP show­cas­ing quite a bit of styl­is­tic va­ri­ety. Pro­to-Be­ing crash­es right out of the gate like a mix of Mul­ti­c­ult, Tar and Dri­ve like Je­hu. Slug then ex­hibits a more catchy, melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty akin to, say, Bitch Mag­net, Pol­vo or Chavez. Ev­i­dence has some acid-drenched pro­to punk vibe to it like MX-80 col­lid­ing with ear­ly The Men plus a hint of Wipers and last but not least, Dis­con­nect ra­di­ates some dis­tinct Hot Snakes-meeet-Na­tion Of Ulysses kind of en­er­gy.

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