Wow, i didn’t expect this vancouver group’s debut record to be such a perfect smasher. It should also turn out to be quite the crowdpleaser as far as contemporary post punk is concerned, turning back the clocks by a decade or two with its decidedly melodic approach, refined songwriting and tons of catchy hooks, combining the strengths of several strands of the genre. The most obvious comparison would be early 2010’s bands like The Estranged, Criminal Code, Holograms, Autobahn or the more recent Girls In Synthesis… but i also pick up some echoes of the more straightforward punk side of things á la Xetas, Daylight Robbery or Anxious Living. And last but not least, groups bordering on noise pop territory in the vein of Piles, Wild Moth or Die! Die! Die! have sure left their mark here aswell.
My favorite british punk group of the moment has yet to write a song that isn’t as infectious as fuck and their most recent digital (?) single release delivers another two of their strongest so far and once again will effortlessly conquer the hearts of every connoiseur of Television Personalities-influenced strumming á la Suburban Homes, Neutrals or Freak Genes.
Zoids keep things classy and weird on their newest tape, which will soon be physically available via Goodbye Boozy. Still clearly operating on the outer fringes of crude and dissonant garage-/post punk and highly demented space rock, this group or person of mysterious whereabouts remains a charmingly broken machine that doesn’t need any fixing.
This Barcelona group plays a certain breed of post punk – the catchy and melodic kind that has been rarely heard in recent months – which i’d say is reminiscent of a rather diverse cluster of genre powerhouses such as Nightwatchers, Sievehead, Red Dons, Criminal Code and early The Estranged. Occasionally they overlap a bit into hardcore territory and in these moments, Acrylics come to mind.
The debut LP of this Long Beach group, inconspicuous at first glance, evolves into a real treat for friends of smart, minimalist post punk at a closer listen. Lithics are the first comparison that springs to mind as well as post punk weirdos Patti and Minneapolis garage punk geniuses Uranium Club, while lead vocalist Jett Witchalls conjures up some serious Kim Gordon vibes here, whose 1980s output with Sonic Youth might’ve also served as an inspiration on downbeat tracks like Shapes, as well as some bits and pieces of 70s/80s The Fall.
Another Print Head release means another perfect storm of weird-ass excentric, chaotic but often unexpectedly melodious garage- and post punk shit, this time around coming across like an odd mixture of contemporary groups of the vaguely egg-related variety with the sluggish grooves of the UV Race and old british Acts like Swell Maps, early Mekons.
Last year’s debut tape of this Portland group was a perfectly fun little thing already but this new shit is just so much stronger in pretty much every aspect, their presentation tighter and the songs more concise, simple yet perfectly balanced and 100% efficient in their amalgamation of garage-, synth- and post punk, radiating out some serious vibes á la Research Reactor Corp., Mononegatives, Ghoulies or Warm Exit.
A bleak mix of post punk, death rock and anarcho punk with a generous dose of Flipper-esque dissonance is what we get on this Galesburg, Illinois project’s current longplayer, charmingly crude at times and presuming a high tolerance of digital clipping on the listener’s part. Otherwise this stays well inside the genre’s usual parameters most of the time yet avoids becoming too repetitive and predictable. Fans of Disjoy, Padkarosda or Clock Of Time will surely get a kick out of this.
A kickass new split EP combining the forces of two New Jersey groups i wasn’t aware of before. Nylon strike all the right chords with me by way of a garage-/post punk hybrid sound roughly in the neighborhood of early Teenanger, Public Eye, Vintage Crop and Marbled Eye while Operants play things a bit more straight, first setting off a garage banger of the Ex-Cult, Civic, The Living Eyes or Sauna Youth variety, followed up by a slightly more post punk-leaning, synth-heavy track giving off a strongly muteant smell.
Another rock solid batch of rhythmic post punk gymnastics by some usual suspects of the Berlin scene. Sound-wise it won’t get more Berlin-esque than this and you also might call Liiek a bit of a one-trick pony, however, that particular trick still works admirably on me and has never been done with such precision engineering by this group before. Think of a mix between Pigeon, Diät, Negative Space, Institute and Nag, boiled down to their raw essentials. Blah blah “concise vision” or something, i guess…
