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.
This Berlin group plucks all the right strings in my neural sound processing circuits on their debut EP, on which they neatly combine a melodic, heavily song-based flavor of post punk á la The Estranged, Daylight Robbery or Sievehead with a decent dose of Wipers action, a bit of glammy eighties goth / death rock and a great deal of catchy, power pop-ish flourishes on top.
Now that’s an impressively confident second EP by this Philadelphia group, newly (re-)issued on a neat pink cassette now by pop-ish punk specialist label Dead Broke Rekerds, presenting a dense package of high calorie catchy earworms that combine a slight hint of early ’90s indie rockers á la Superchunk, Sebadoh, Seam and Superdrag with an even stronger dose of present-day power pop sensations like Teenage Tom Petties, Bad Sports, Teen Line, Night Court, Tommy And The Commies, Ex-Gold and Mr. Teenage and it’s their infallible songwriting capability that really elevates these tunes.
The past couple weeks had quite an abundance of incredible short-form 2-track releases and i’m even shorter on time than i anticipated as, on top of my infamously unreliable brain chemistry, this week also came up with a family emergency for me to help mitigate, so i’m gonna take the liberty of just dumping the four strongest of the batch in a single post.
The most surprising of thiose was certainly the debut (?) single of Atlanta, Georgia group Assembly, covering a pretty wide and eclectic stylistic spectrum in the postcore, noise- and math rock field ranging from classic ’90s and early ’00s Dischord-flavored sounds of the Faraquet, Bluetip and Q And Not U variety over other ’90s phenomena like Polvo, Braniac and Chavez to more recent noise rock and art punk acts like Wax Chattels, Solderer, Body House, Haunted Horses and, most of all, Spray Paint and assiciated later acts Rider/Horse and During.
Australia’s Tee Vee Repairman – yeah, of course it’s another group of Gee Tee’s Ishka Edmeades – follows up a bunch of previous EPs and a brilliant LP with a new 7″ whose two songs can easily be counted as among the finest in a discography that’s never been lacking in infectious power pop melodies to begin with.
In a similar vein, there’s a new Smirk (aka Nick Vicario, also of Public Eye, Crisis Man und Cemento) 7″ that also sees the dude considerably upping his songwriting game, going places we haven’t seen of him before with Domestic Dog kinda fusing oldschool anarcho and post punk flourishes with a pronounced 77-ish melodicity and an almost Television-like spaciousness that also permeates the other tune Manhunt in Paradise, the whole of which sounds a bit like the most recent Institute LP being taken a step further in its art punk elegance.
And finally, in contrast to the previous bands, we have an example of a group plainly serving up more of the same and what a brilliant kind of “same” that is, the new 7″ of Brooklyn power pop group Shop Talk who’ve so far always blown me away with every new release and the new one can do no wrong either, with Museum Of Sex being another flawless instance of catchy and straightforward ’77-ish punk with that distinct Dickies flavor while the more intricately constructed Gaslight slows things down a bit, adds a more melancholy vibe and equal parts of a Buzzcocks- and Replacements quality to the mix. A knockout tune to say the least.
