Any new 1-800-MIKEY record is always a treat of pleasantly predictable, uneventful comfort food from a dude otherwise known as part of Gee Tee among other things, whose own little niche on the garage-punk / power-pop spectrum has been well-established by now and though his music won't ever blow anyone away through sheer originality or innovation, it sure always does through the pure and innocent power of straightforward, no-frills songwriting brilliance! And so he does again on his third LP now, unleashing yet another batch of infectious and utterly endearing pop earworms that won't leave you terribly surprised but never fail to delight either in what may be their most relaxed and low-key effort so far, this time at points even fully embracing kind of an oldschool dream pop vibe, especially in the record's second half and tunes like K-Style and Falling In Love.
Different flavors and intensities of cowpunk-related noise seem to be a running thread in the past two weeks and right on cue, there's also a new record by one of recent years' most impressive voices in the field: Reuben Sawyer's solo project Anytime Cowboy, as usual released without much fuss or even the slightest heads-up in terms of promotion and i like that - Anytime Cowboy certainly ain't a group in danger of getting dubbed an industry plant by kids just coming to terms with the fact that such a thing as the music PR business even exists, haha. Anyway, with how massive an instant classic last year's Demons Obey has been, it would surely be kind of a tall order to expect another of those right away and indeed, its successor doesn't even feel too concerned with one-upping that record and instead comes across as just another very, very good record that may feel a couple tracks too long at one point or another but on the plus side, shuffles things around with a slightly altered, lighter overall feel, leaning a bit heavier into a relaxed and upbeat indie rock vibe while still carrying that unmistakable folk-ish strummy, jangly feel and the uncanny, surreal quality to these tunes. At eighteen of those, the record predictably has a bit of a looser and more fragmented character, though if you judge it by the sheer number of certified bangers on there, i'm gonna say it's nothing short of another fucking winner.
This Boston group has six unresistably smelly puddles of oldschool-ish garage punk action for us that fit roughly inbetween the basic parameters of classic Reatard(s), golden-era Liquids and more KBD-inspired shit we've heard from the likes of Freakees and Launcher, with a couple pop-nuggets thrown in that remind me of stuff á la Dark Thoughts or early Vaguess. There's nothing terribly smart or original about it really but the tunes, performances and attitude are just spot-on and whenever i'm craving some basic no-frills catchy garage mayhem, this shit's just gonna fit the bill.
Chubby's still new-ish band EZ8 has now been properly renamed The Easy Eight and also has their first LP out via Static Shock Records which, to be fair, is actually just the first EP extended with four new tunes, which is also fine 'cos that EP was plenty awesome enough to be listened to over and over again and the new tracks are just as marvellous in that trademark Oi! / Power Pop fusion that only Chubby and his co-conspirators can pull off so infectiously. A good catchy tune and a stubborn, tight performance is all that's needed here, simple as that. I mean, what else do you expect of a new Chubby record? A progressive rock opera in nine chapters? No, you'll get this beauty instead, though there's still a couple of neat flourishes we haven't heard from any of his previous groups like that bit dungeon-esque oldschool heavy metal shredding throughout the verses of Fear As A Gift.
Just like that Celebrators LP i've just posted, the debut LP of Oamaru, New Zeeland group Cuticles is yet another really freakin' good 21-song LP that could have become a freakin' brillian 15-song LP just by cutting some fat but ya know... i'm not gonna complain about such an abundance of good, especially if that shit is so fucking up my alley. Featuring members of 2010s NZ DIY punk staples Moonrakers and Trendees, this group, which first really caught my attention with their excellent 2023 EP Pavlova, certainly shares some of that shambolic avantgarde DNA but channels it into a much more catchy and melodic whole, trading in much of that raw Half Japanese-style mayhem for a more approachable aesthetic, reminiscent among others of old british DIY acts in the neighborhood of Swell Maps, Television Personalities, Mekons and Desperate Bicycles. There's a good deal of old Flying Nun energy goin' on aswell plus some stray occurences of the more pop-focused end of the Pink Flag-era Wire spectrum in tunes like Making Up Shit. If i had to come up with more recent bands as comparisons, i'd say New York's Famous Logs in History, Philadelphia group Society and the early works of Adelaide's own Wireheads don't strike my as totally off either.
This dude based in Cincinnati has five catchy and explosive garage punk, power- and noise pop nuggets for us on his debut EP bookended by two undeniable knockout tunes roughly in the vein of old Marked Men, Sonic Avenues, early Mind Spiders, Bad Sports or Steve Adamyk Band, while the middle part branches out a bit into more relaxed midtempo territory with some surf twang getting infused into a piece of '90s indie-/slacker rock in Dock, a bit of eighties Flying Nun pop running through Acid Angel and the Psychic TV cover tune God Star doesn't shit the bed either. All in all, a freakin' enjoyable little package and i could definitely use more of that shit.
This Springfield, Illinois group has conjured up an insanely tasty and addictive debut EP here that, despite a tiny bit of a Rudimentary Peni-esque death rock-ish vibe early on in the opening tune The Stain, quickly settles into an oldschool niche located somewhere on the melodic fringes of the mid-to-late eighties punk landscape including a good bit bit of pre-'90s pop punk goodness á la Fastbacks, still unaffected by the genre's later disposable sameness but rather grounded in refined, classic pop songcraft. Another valid comparison to describe this shit would be the recent EPs of Montreal group Psychic Armour, minus their heavy metal influences.
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.
