2026 is the year i'm finally coming to terms with the fact that egg punk has clearly peaked sometime over the last couple years and at this point, much of it feels kinda gentrified and overdone and i'm basically waiting for the next creative explosion in punk to emerge from some other unexpected niche. Just for the record, i'm not suddenly losing interest in, or even hating on the genre. This ain't another eggpunk sucks manifesto, haha. The beautifull mess we've retroactively come to assign the egg punk label to has been an endless well of joy and creativity that helped keep garage punk fresh and thrilling for the last decade-plus and the whole thing probably ain't going anywhere in the forseeable future. Also, if you're old enough to have seen a couple of subgenres rise and decline over the years, you know that no genre ever really dies anyway - eventually everything's always gonna re-emerge in some mutated form. The main thing that's changed for me in recent years is merely a sense of complete oversaturation and the fact that that certain strains of the genre appear to have very much consolidated themselves into a set of easily quantifiable, infinitely reproducible standard formulas - akin to some shallow instagram "aesthetic" - that has lost much of its novelty over time and if there's ever been a punk subgenre in danger of a hostile AI slop takover, that would probably happen to egg punk first with its increasingly generic-feeling library of tropes and set pieces. Anyway, all i'm saying is i'm rapidly losing patience and tolerance for the less inspired, middle-of-the-road strains of the genre and everyone's just gonna have to do a little more than just faithfully reproduce an established genre pattern to gain my attention going forward.
In that slowly declining landscape, a new Cherry Cheeks LP just came along and i'm actually positively struck by how admirably the group's sound has held up over the years (actually im gonna say that quite a lot of the genre's veterans' and forerunners' output still sounds pretty freakin' fresh to my ears to this day), though weirdly they're also exactly the kind of group whose past output is now in constant danger of retroactively fitting that aforementioned standard formula a bit too closely and thus being drowned out by the sheer forgettable mass of what i'd now call MOR eggpunk releases. The curse of being ahead of the curve i guess... What has always kept them afloat has been their excellent songwriting ability though and on this new LP, they not only fully lean into that strength, they even considerably up their game with an all-killer set of insanely catchy and addictive noise- and power pop tunes while also ever-so-slightly roughing things up on the production front with an overall just slightly more organic and propulsive drive that just about does its part to let their sound shine in 2026, even though it ain't exactly on the cutting edge of anything in this day and age. Let me put it like this: If you wanna ride the 12XU eggpunk coaster from now on, you need to be at least this tall. Also: In the end it's always about the songs, stupid. And these just fuckin' rip.
Expectations are always through the roof with a new Electric Prawns 2 record but so far they've never disappointed and these two new tunes won't either, showing the group 100% in their element, City Streets being the kind of psych-infused garage punk smasher based around a strong and simple hook they've always excelled in and Be With You Tonight once again showcasing the group's supreme power pop instincts. After a half-year long break that almost feels like an eternity with this group following their incredibly prolific 2024-2025 streak, our favorite australian hallucinogenic hit factory still doesn't show any signs of wear.
This Maumee, Ohio group has some synth-enhanced power pop-ish garage punk goodness for us on their debut LP whose catchy-as-fuck pop nuggets are constantly steeped in a hazy, uncanny atmosphere and covering a quite decent spectrum ranging all the way from old Lost Sounds, solo Reatard or Digital Leather over the song explosions of early Vagues or King Tuff towards quite recent stuff like Monda, Booji Boys or that incredible Emmett O'Connor LP from last year. A barrage of undeniable earworms whose prevalent sense of melancholy more often than not is met with tons of a quite uplifting, euphoric energy.
The trajectory Brooklyn punks Shop Talk have taken over the years has certainly been among the less likely ones, having first come to my attention with their self-titled 2016 debut mini-LP, still featuring what i'd describe as a more leaned-back garage punk style very much of its time, somewhere inbetween equal parts Gun Club and contemporary acts of the time like Woolen Men and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. After that, it took them like seven years before their next release, 2023's incredible The Offering EP which saw both a thorough overhaul and significant maturation of their sound defined by catchy-ass '77-ish hooks rarely heard in such a rousing manner since the glory years of Dickies, Buzzcocks and Adverts, which would already be more than enough for them to perfectly stand out from the pack but it's actually only half of their appeal here and wouldn't be complete without the equally melodic, elaborate guitar work of front man Jon Garcia and his vicious yet soul- and tuneful singing. A winning formula to which they've stuck ever since and now their second or first longplayer, depending on how you count, feels like the logical culmination of all those years of infectious songcraft, half of it consisting of new material and the other half of kickass new recordings of some of their greatest hits so far, stretching back as far as their aforementioned debut record. The result sounds like a million bucks and as far as straightforward but elegant punk rock with a clear vision goes, i doubt you'll get to hear much better this year. An instant classic if i ever heard one.
The successor to the Astoria, Oregon group's incredible 2024 Gay Bordom LP doesn't quite reach the same level of originality and playful creativity, playing it a bit safer and at times veering a bit too close to pop punk territory for my taste, but for what it is, this is actually a pretty neat record in its own right still, the songs ranging between servicable and pretty freakin' good and still spanning a good deal of sonic variety so yeah... this is a strong enough follow-up to a larger-than-life record that would've been kind of a tough act to follow for pretty much anyone and it almost feels a bit unfair to not judge this new one on its own merits. It is what it is and that's still pretty fucking good, even if we know this group can do much better.
Reuben Sawyer has been active for quite a while already with various groups and projects in a wide variety of musical styles, though he only really entered the 12XU universe in 2023 with Demons Obey, his third LP under the Anytime Cowboy moniker, which has been a strange beast for sure in juxtaposing elements of blues-ish and jangly cowpunk- and garage pop with a somewhat surreal, otherworldly quality anchored by Sawyer's uncannily calm vocal delivery. His newest LP now may as well be his strongest, most accomplished one yet, streamlining his previously somewhat cluttered disjointed sonic space into an unexpectedly cohesive whole, making his equally odd, catchy and melancholic compositions - enabled by some next-level songwriting chops - glow and sparkle like never before.
Zulo of Rosario, Argentinia have already accumulated a respectable number of LPs and EPs with a varying sound inbetween the parameters of fuzzed-out psychedelic garage punk, noise- and power pop, but never before have their tunes been as consistently awesome as on this new LP on which they lean in on their more spaced-out tendencies, a psychedelic haze enveloping an impeccable batch of super catchy new tunes that at some points may resemble an oldschool Telescopes, Spacemen 3 or Flying Saucer Attack vibe as much as somewhat more recent shit á la Honey Radar, Far Corners, Germ House or Violent Change.
So here we have the debut EP of a new group from Berlin featuring members of Les Lullies and Slander Tonge among others, confidently acing their way through four flawless tunes of jangly power pop elegance. This is a genre that lives and dies by the quality of the songwriting and these folks pull out all the stop to make it work... the tunes, the arrangements, the performances. Simple as that.
Sex Mex have been a constant for the past couple years as my go-to act for straight-ahead fuzzy and melodic no-frills garage punk that doesn't evolve much beyond its time-tested formula but so far hasn't ever disappointed either, always kept afloat by the quality of the song material and this newest EP is without doubt among the strongest sets of new tunes they've let loose so far, another no-frills treat of synth-enhanced, euphoric garage pop to lift the spirits when we desperately need it.
New fodder for soft-hearted eggheads comes from a (probably) Providence, Rhode Island based dude or possibly duo, delivering five first-rate fluffy and sugary power pop anthems in a modest, unpretentious eggpunk-ish guise quite similar to the likes of Gonk, Power Pants, Gee Tee, Music For Microwaves, 1-800 Mikey and Rude Television, with the song material itself being the main attraction here, never ceasing to amaze in its simple, straightforward pop glory.
