Antenna - Antenna

Awe­some to hear this dude's an­gel voice again! Just a cou­ple weeks ago, Shogun, best known as the pow­er­house front man of Roy­al Headache, made his tri­umphant re­turn (let's not for­get the neat 2018 Shogun and the Sheets 7" though) with the de­but EP of Finno­guns Wake, the duo com­pris­ing of him and Finn Berzin and now, pret­ty much out of nowhere, there's al­so the de­but EP by an­oth­er band of his, An­ten­na, pop­ping up which, of his projects so far, aligns clos­est to the old­school Roy­al Headache vibe in terms of its song ma­te­r­i­al while mov­ing on from the rough garage sound to­wards a some­what slick­er aes­thet­ic in­be­tween the pa­ra­me­ters of straight-up melod­ic punk rock, noise- and pow­er pop with a kin­da un­ex­pect­ed Leather­face edge to it. Sweet!

Al­bum-Stream →

Sex Mex - Cold, Not Cute

A new EP by the San An­to­nio, Texas group and as al­ways i'm hap­py to say that Sex Mex still sound very much like Sex Mex, their mix­ture of garage- and synth punk, noise- and pow­er pop trans­port­ing the aes­thet­ics of on­ly the most catchy and melod­ic ar­ti­facts out of the whole Reatard era. Re­li­able shit that doesn't try any­thing fun­ny and in­stead just de­liv­ers on the hooks!

The EP suf­fers from non-em­bed­d­a­ble band­camp dis­ease, but you can lis­ten to the whole thing over at their band­camp page.

Vaguess - Thanks /​/​ No Thanks

A main­stay of re­cent years in garage punk is back with a some­what more high-pro­file LP via Er­ste Theke Ton­träger fol­low­ing a re­cent string of more un­der­stat­ed cas­sette and dig­i­tal re­leas­es. This thing is as eclec­tic as any of these but at the same time, a lot more fo­cused, de­ter­mined and con­sis­tent than some of those more scrap­py re­cent of­fer­ings. Span­ning a spec­trum from the propul­sive post punk of the open­ing sal­vo (When It's Gone, A.P.A.C.), melan­choly in­die rock bal­lads (Texas Cloud), comp­fy synth pop tunes (Let U Know) to straight­for­ward garage-/fuzz punk ex­plo­sions (Can't Take It, 2 Car Garage), there's plen­ty of meat to dig your teeth in­to, all held to­geth­er by Vin­ny Earley's al­ways con­fi­dent, of­ten plain­ly bril­liant song­writ­ing pow­ers. Last but not least, Week­end Shad­ows and Car­ry­on are fur­ther ex­am­ples of ex­act­ly that kind of supreme pow­er-/fuzz pop hymn the dude has al­ways ex­celled at.

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Rude Television - I Want To Believe

Hav­ing first come to my at­ten­tion via a split tape with AJ Cortes and The Bur­glars, this group from West Palm Beach, Flori­da has on­ly got­ten stronger with every new re­lease and this one is no ex­cep­tion, de­liv­er­ing a new round of catchy, com­pact blasts in the some­what eggy realms of pow­er pop, synth- and garage punk evok­ing thor­ough­ly fa­vor­able com­par­isons to the likes of Gee Tee, Erik Ner­vous, Vaguess and Sa­tan­ic To­gas.

Al­bum-Stream →

Gremlin - Same Fate /​ Bliss

Fol­low­ing their still fresh, sen­sa­tion­al de­but EP, this new 2-track dig­i­tal sin­gle of Cincinnati's Grem­lins can do no wrong ei­ther, Same Fate be­ing a snap­py and per­fect­ly eco­nom­i­cal garage punk dit­ty while Bliss once again taps in­to their more psych-in­fused melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties with some dis­tinct hints of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Ex-Gold or Bad Sports.

Beta Máximo - Creo que E​.​T. es Melvin

Span­ish noise pop over­lords Be­ta Max­i­mo re­turn with a strong new batch of tunes. Hard to be­lieve their pro­lif­ic out­put be­gan just some­time last sum­mer… Start­ing out with what i'd con­sid­er more of an egg­punk-aes­thet­ic, they've con­stant­ly kept chang­ing things up, grad­u­al­ly evolv­ing in­to a some­what slow­er, dreamy and slight­ly shoegaze-y di­rec­tion and these new songs strike me as the most re­al­ized and well-round­ed stuff we've heard from them re­cent­ly.

Al­bum-Stream →

The Abdo Men - Ulcer Anthology: Laff Your Way To Total Destruction

What­ev­er there is to be found out about this Cincin­nati, Ohio group is cloaked in a veil of un­cer­tain­ty, not helped in the least by that kin­da stereo­typ­i­cal "los­er band" his­to­ry giv­en on this cassette's band­camp page. So, prob­a­bly, there are folks known from groups like The Serfs, The Drin, Crime of Pass­ing and Mo­tor­bike at work here and at least some of the songs on this can be traced back to the year 2019, when they first ap­peared on the Pedes­tri­an Sen­ti­ments EP. Oth­er­wise i'm re­al­ly not too sure if any of the de­tails giv­en are to be be­lieved. You can't ar­gue with the mu­sic though, which kicks ass from start to fin­ish, in some way evok­ing the aes­thet­ics, vary­ing fi­deli­ty and styl­is­tic va­ri­ety of gold­en era Guid­ed By Voic­es, oth­er­wise rough­ly os­cil­lat­ing be­tween jan­g­ly pow­er pop in the vein of, say, Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys or Bad Sports in tracks like Cow­ard Of The State, Wannabe (A Star) and Sil­ver Queen; grimy psy­che­del­ic garage rock (Didn't Win The Lot­tery, Ob­nox­ious And A Neu) as well as a cou­ple of catchy melod­ic garage punk smash­ers car­ry­ing the sig­na­ture of groups á la Boo­ji Boys, Tyvek and Par­quet Courts. It's Been A Bad Week kin­da re­sem­bles the garage-drenched noise aes­thet­ics of A Place To Bury Strangers, Peyton's Kids has sort of a Woolen Men feel to it and through­out, the folk-in­fused post punk of ear­li­er Chronophage comes to mind more than once.

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The Wind Ups - Happy Like This

The sec­ond LP of this Chico, Cal­i­for­nia based group led by Jake Sprech­er (of Smoke­screens, Bee­hive and Ter­ry Malts fame) picks the strands right up where they were left off on their amaz­ing 2021 de­but al­bum Try Not To Think, which is to say: More of their ir­re­sistibly catchy blend of noise- and pow­er pop, garage- and fuzz punk mak­ing for yet an­oth­er high-oc­tane bub­blegum pop spec­ta­cle whose im­pec­ca­ble song­writ­ing prowess nev­er floun­ders even for a sec­ond!

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Alien Nosejob - The Derivative Sounds of​.​.​. Or​.​.​. A Dog Always Returns to its Vomit

Is that ti­tle meant to be un­der­stood as a 13th Floor El­e­va­tors ref­er­ence? If so, it kin­da fits (plus a ton of Kinks in here as well, i'd say…) as this LP marks the clos­est the eclec­tic project of Jake Robert­son (Aus­muteants, Smarts, Drug Sweat, etc…) has ever ap­proached clas­sic '60s garage rock ter­ri­to­ry - a propo­si­tion that could eas­i­ly turn out a re­cip­ie for pure bore­dom in the hands of less­er mu­si­cians, but damn… this dude sim­ply knows how to con­struct and car­ry a catchy tune. Add to the mix lots of an­cient pow­er pop of on­ly the sad­dest kind and you get an LP that will sure­ly turn out a bit dif­fi­cult to swal­low for some fans of his broad­er work, yet al­so doesn't seem too out-of-place if you're fa­mil­iar with the breadth of pre­vi­ous Alien Nose­job re­leas­es, as Robert­son has al­ready dab­bled in sim­i­lar fare on al­bums such as Var­i­ous Fads and Tech­no­log­i­cal Achieve­ments (2018) and Sud­den­ly Every­thing Is Twice As Loud (2020), al­though here he fi­nal­ly goes all-in on this over­whelm­ing sense of doom, an all-de­vour­ing black cloud of deep melan­cho­lia.

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Cherry Cheeks - CCLPII

On their sec­ond LP - once again brought to us by the taste­ful folks of To­tal Punk Records - Or­lan­do group Cher­ry Cheeks present them­selves at their straight­est and sim­plest, dumb­est and catchi­est so far mak­ing for yet an­oth­er glo­ri­ous­ly fuzzy lump of joy­ful high-calo­ry pow­er pop, garage- and synth punk fluff with abun­dant echoes of classy shit á la Smirk, Set-Top Box, Prison Af­fair, Gee Tee, Ghoulies and ISS.

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